Márcia Falcão

Painting with solid gestures and thick paint layers, Márcia Falcão articulates relationships between the female body and pictorial matter. The artist’s tackles motifs from the carioca suburbs where she grew up, lives and works. Her palette, with its prevalent browns, reds and other skin tones, seeks to represent fleshy bodies. Márcia Falcão’s paintings’ aggressiveness falls mainly upon the feminine figures that inhabit them. Here, the flesh is punctured, cut, lacerated and burned in a reenactment of the systemic violence threatening women’s lives, mainly black and from peripheral areas in Brazil. In other works, on the other hand, there are equally visceral scenes of ecstasy, ushering in a polarity between pleasure and pain. The sensorial excitement of Falcão’s painting owes to the urgency of her subject as much as the artist’s lived experience in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Her solo exhibitions include Monuments of Flesh, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2024) Pai Contra Mãe, Instituto Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023); Márcia Falcão, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); Márcia Falcão, Carpintaria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021) e Para Além do corpo: nudez semântica, Galeria Aymoré, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020). Among the group shows the artist has participated in are Corpo-casa : Diálogos entre Carolee Schneeman, Diego Bianchi e Márcia Falcão, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (2024); The Big Picture, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2023); Funk! Um grito de ousadia e liberdade, MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil (2023); A Parábola do Progresso, SESC Pompeia, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); MAR + Enciclopédia Negra, MAR — Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2022); Crônicas Cariocas, MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021); Engraved into the Body, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, USA (2021) and Ainda fazemos as coisas em grupo, Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2020).