DARIANE . MARTIÓL
Text by: Joyce Farias. Catalogue of the 32nd Exhibition Program of the São Paulo Cultural Center. 2022
NON-FAMILIAR SELF-PORTRAIT
Portraiture, a genre explored across different artistic languages, became consolidated with the pictorial idea of representing individuals.
Self-portraiture, however, is more than a mere extension of portraiture; at times, it appears as a technical overcoming on the part of the artist. Yet there are self-portraits that move beyond technical concerns and also reveal the artist as human as any other individual, for they lead us into a more intimate universe of the one who created their own image.
Dariane Martiól’s work, Non-familiar Self Portrait, invites us to reflect on how this intimate universe can be explored. By bringing forth revelations or offering subjectivities, the artist chooses how to guide and narrate her poetics to the public. Martiól proposes that we enter her “home,” her origin, evoking a somewhat conflicted familial atmosphere constructed between herself and her mother.
At first glance, the work raises questions: to what extent can a work of art construct narratives and reflections about its creator? Would it be a true retrieval of the artist’s own history?
There are hardly any concrete answers to these questions. Nevertheless, posing them here is not intended to exhaust the possible readings of Martiól’s work. Rather, they help us to understand the theme explored by the artist, since it is certain that, in the field of the arts, an artist’s origin is not always the central idea of their production. Yet it is undeniable that many artists agree on one point: origin—whatever its nature (geographical, biological, cultural, or affective)—is always the backdrop of any creation. For this reason, it is worth highlighting Martiól’s own argument for conceiving her self-portraits with her mother:
“The artistic propositions I develop with my mother are part of a philosophical project situated within the art–life context, which seeks—through photographs, video, and poems—to propose reflections on aging, eroticism, gender performativity, motherhood, and moral conventions surrounding unconditional love and parental responsibility. It is an artistic game of reaffirming life, through which my mother and I have art as a strategy for survival. I am the daughter of Adair Martiól, who is 70 years old, a single mother, and who lived alone in the countryside of Paraná until my return in 2020. Non-failiar Self Portrait is a photographic project in which I record our bodies within the domestic space. The title refers to the concept of the Unheimlich, which in psychoanalysis concerns something that is familiar but presents itself in an atypical way, producing a certain sense of estrangement.”
Non-familiar Self portrait is a project that comprises several series of photographs in which Martiól and her mother perform, forming an atmosphere imbued with ideas of genealogy, inheritance, and identity—whether through their bodies or through elements laden with symbolism from this familial universe so distinct between mother and daughter.
In the 32nd edition of the CCSP Exhibition Program (2022), Martiól presents one of the series from this project. In a brief description, it consists of a sequence of photographs in which the two figures portrayed are semi-nude and perform among elements veiled with crocheted towels. Martiól’s face is also veiled. The entire composition of the series arouses a certain curiosity about what is hidden. However, the only act of unveiling occurs when the daughter’s face is unveiled by the mother. Everything in these images seems deeply interconnected; there is an incorruptible dialogue between the portrayed figures, a kind of bond that immediately reconnects us—or allows us to recognize ourselves—through this idea of (uterine) mirroring of our origins.
Also composing this series at the CCSP is one of the crocheted towels, a work authored by the artist’s mother. At this point, the artist distances herself from the canonical norms of a more conservative art system and provokes the public to reflect on questions of origin and creation, since Martiól not only places her mother as her source of origin but also as a co-creator of her work.