The artist shared, "it felt important to look for a lasting material, something that evoked ancestry, that conveyed the idea of passing something down, of spreading, protecting and I found all those sentiments in copper. Stitching is often related to caring, hand-making, and slowly building and in this collection it allowed me to forge a relationship with each piece as I spent many hours carefully passing copper fine threads through tiny holes on the paper, stretching, smoothing, and trying not to break them. I feel ancient wisdom is like that, it’s slowly built, it’s to be passed, and it means to take care of people by advising, by sharing experience, it’s a thread that follows many lifetimes and relies on relationships not to be broken."

Asked what initially drew Mariana to exploring the human figure in her artwork, the artist shared: “I’ve been drawing female figures since I was a little kid, all the adults around me used to say I was going to grow up to be a fashion designer because I simply loved making up outfits and poses in my drawings. I ended up graduating as a graphic designer and I moved away from my family to Rio de Janeiro. My first year here was kind of lonely and meant adapting a lot since there are many cultural differences between here and where I come from, a much smaller city in the South of Brazil.”

San Martin continued: “Drawing became kind of a therapy for most of my free time and being away from everybody I knew drove my attention to all the new and different people and behaviors around me. I started wondering why I felt so misplaced, they were all people just like me after all, it shouldn’t feel so unfamiliar. That led to thinking about the role of culture and environment in our lives and personalities and about how all the choices

I was making and experiences I was having were affecting deeply and permanently who I was becoming. I become a lot more interested in the human part of my drawings instead of their outfits. My figures, then, lost their clothes and hair and started to interact with abstract forms and colors. I began to see the faces and bodies I drew and painted as containers to much more than their looks.”

The torn portraits in the artist’s series involve a unique process of deconstruction and reconstruction. We were wondering if Mariana could tell us more about the inspiration behind this technique and its significance in her artistic journey. We learned that: “As I started looking to the inner worlds of people and got more interested in how our personal and collective realities affect one another, I got to this idea that we are made of many layers of instants and experiences. Tearing my drawings is, for me, a way of mimicking the process of living. We start like this pristine image of ourselves and as we allow ourselves to live, we discover different configurations and possibilities of existing, we are marked by emotions, by experiences, we become more complex and colorful, we become an intricate and unique story.

The Amuletos series explore these ideas through stitching with copper. In other works and series, I do the same with paint, fabric, carving and really any other materials that make sense at the time. It’s important for me to work with materials and techniques that relate to the story I’m telling and add to that narrative.”

Mariana described ancient wisdom as a thread passing through many lifetimes. Asked how her artwork contributes to this thread, and what role she sees art playing in preserving and passing down wisdom, the artist said: “I feel we’ve been, as a collective, so disconnected from our history and ancestry. Western culture praises standing out as the ultimate success and that, most times, means ignoring completely the fact that nobody at all starts from zero and nobody at all goes anywhere alone. We are a social species, we need each other, we need to share knowledge and experience and being able to do that is exactly what makes us so special.

I feel that using art to tell stories of beliefs and wisdom from many different cultures and times makes palpable that the humanity each one of us carries is the same as everyone else’s. Art is a beautiful way of recognizing ourselves outside of ourselves. Art is, for me, a way in as much as a way out, and allows us to realize that in and out are just the one same way.”