©evarocha #EvaRocha #artist #brazilian #contemporaryartists #women_artists #latinx__artist #biboc_artist #artistas_do_Brasil
Biografia:
Eva Rocha é uma artista multimídia. Nascida em um povoado de três ruas e sem acesso a materiais de arte, desenhava com fiapos de pano e com cabelo. Somente aos dezenove anos tem contato com a arte no contexto de museus e galerias quando visita o Masp. Desencorajada por uma história da arte mais eurocêntrica, e de presença mais elitista, só se dedica ao processo criativo quando vivia nos Andes peruanos. Impactada pela arte pré-colombiana, arte dos povos originários, desenvolve métodos relacionados à estética de artefatos. Logo, vivendo nos Estados Unidos, expõe seu trabalho em vários museus e realiza sua primeira individual como prêmio, no Taubman Museum, em 2023. Grande parte de sua obra faz referência a artefatos indígenas e consequentes diálogos interdisciplinares presentes no olhar descontextualizado sobre objetos culturais.
Bio:
Eva Rocha is a multimedia artist. Born in a small town with three streets, without access to art materials, she drew with lints of cloth and hair. It was only at the age of nineteen that she saw art in the context of museums and galleries. She began her artistic work during the years she lived in the Andes of Peru. Influenced by pre-Columbian art, she developed methods related to the aesthetics of artifacts. In the United States, she exhibits her work in several museums and had her first solo exhibition as an award-winning exhibition at the Taubman Museum in 2023. Much of her work references indigenous artifacts and the resulting interdisciplinary dialogues present in the decontextualized views of cultural objects.
I was born in a 3 streets, 9 blocks town in Brazil. Itacolomy, as it was called, was not in the map. It is now, Novo itacolomy. The word Itacolomy, by the way, means Beautiful Rock in the native language of Brazil. There were no galleries or museums in Itacolomy. But yes, there was Art. An art that was genuine to place and collective expression. And what is that which is called art? Who were those that decided what art is? What is implicit in the art dialogue - if there is one. Who are the ones who decide who participate in the arts, in the arts’ dialogue? Art creation is not a privilege. Art is an atemporal own alphabet of any so-called-culture. Art exists prior to definitions of culture or art.
Me, first on the left, playing with a doll that belonged to my cousin from the city brought.
My mother was from Minas, and my father was from Bahia. My maternal grandmother had 15 children. My paternal grandmother had 17 children. I have a lot of cousins…
Unfamiliar portrait with mother and father [and neck brace at age 16]
…washing my grandmother’s hair in the Rio São Francisco
Grandmother, 101 years old… A baby is 5 years old and a cat is 5 years old and dog is 5 years old but each one is a completely different age … A white person is 50 years old and an indígena person is 50 years old, or 100 years old. A tree is 100 years old or 500 years old, each one accordingly with its species.
When I was looking at my indigenous grandmother in the river, I thought:
Pai
Latina. I used to live in the United States and I co-founded a nonprofit to promote Latin Art Art and take art programs to marginalized Latino communities [most Latinxs in the US are Indigenous descendants]. I fought for inclusion and to open for fair conditions to participate. I advocated for what I believed that, art, as a place of participation and dialogue, should be aaccessible to all groups. Talent is not privilege, but conditions to participate in the arts is.
Project Mixtecas: I met with the indigenous Mixtec women immigrants to the United States. We talk about their culture, their symbology. I presented some works in Art History [in books} and Contemporary Art to create knowledge of the quality of their own art. We did an exhibition of their work as Art in an Installation of Textiles Art. Many groups don’t get to participate in the arts and became just an images of inclusion but without really participating in the arts.
I used to participate with a group of women artists and social workers on a staged ‘arm fighting’ - we raised money for social causes.
While working with communities I was also invited to participate in the arts. A career in the arts initiate organically. I was invited to show a work in 2011 {first work shown in a gallery space, I created it with my hair] and I created sculptural puppets that were shown in festivals, specially in the Latin American Day I helped the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to stablished. My hope was that the art of indigenous / latin would be seen beyond the view of exotified crafts, but as an art with its own aesthetics.
I used to be a tour guide for the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Many times I thought about how there was a difference in seen European antique art and seen Pre-Colombian art. I had lived in Peru and that art inspired me as an artist. I created this cloth sculpture “Chancay” [based in a Chancay burial object}, and I consider it a very important work in my career, but it was not seen as an artwork, and was dismissed from the basement.Nevertheless, I have constantly insisting in making reference to the art of indigenous root, to be seen as art. A large part of my work is based in artifacts.. Due to the dismissal of artifacts of indigenous peoples as art, the reference in aesthetic also gets dismissed as art.
After a occupying the space of an abandoned warehouse and creating a solo with many works of sculptures and also project mapping I developed myself, technique I used to create a artwork to bring awareness of women trafficking, I received a prize as emerging artist in 2016. I started to dedicate to an art career at that point.
#EvaRocha #eva_rocha_artist #brazilian #contemporary #womenartist #latinxartist #bibocartist #emergingartist #artistas_do_Brasil
In 2021 I was awarded my very first solo: It was due to have won Taubman Museum’s Trienal’s First Prize (with this work, Silence Chorus, my own method, developed from the time I lived in the Andes of Peru and working on reproducing pre-colombian art, as assistant to a maestro of ceramics).. The solo exhibition took place at the Taubman Museum in 2022. I dedicated it to the [art] history of Indigenous Peoples and descendants in diaspora and based all the works artifacts of Indigenous cultures. I left the United Stated in 2022.
E se eu cansei de ter que me definir para pertencer?? Não branca o suficiente antes, no elitismo paulista e nascida no interior. Quando entrando nos Estados Unidos fui registrada na imigração como black devido a lei de uma-gota-de-sangue-negro “one-drop rule” — todo descendente de negro é negro]. Depois da pandemia veio a nomenclatura BIPOC [black indigenous people of color - preto indígena pessoa de cor, como passei a ser classificada], e também a subcategoria Latina [que na verdade era um separatismo para se referir aos descendentes indigenas das américas, os realmente chamados Latinos]. De volta ao Brasil, meu fenótipo é obviamente indígena, mas minha avó indígena foi arrancada de seu grupo, desaldeada. E ai quê? Indigena em diáspora é indígena ainda? [Meu pai, indígena de criação, com seu terno feito para o dia de seu casamento é ainda indígena? Na discriminação que sofria me lembro que ele era sempre] Então me pergunto, qual é meu pertencimento?? Quando eu mudo de lugar, eu mudo de raça?? *Pai indígeno/preto, Mãe romani/indígena. E se tudo sou eu? Se todas as raças estão em mim — eu tenho direito à elas? Como artista, eu poderia simplesmente pertencer às artes pelo meu talento, assim como um artista homem branco poderia, sem eu ter que ser um gênero ou uma raça conveniente para uma classificação de inclusão dentro do racismo estrutural?
Uma grande parte do meu trabalho é sobre desumanização. Eu sou descendente de vários grupos que passaram por processos de desumanização. E quero poder comentar nesse processo do humano, como humano. Toda desumanização é uma desumanização como um todo- não apenas feita a uma raça, cor, grupo, mas a todos como humanos, ou como animais. É o mesmo processo, de escravidão ou genocídios de colonização ou perseguição, ou tráfico humano em tempos passados ou atuais, ou torturas [à pessoas ou animais]… Somos todos nós a sofrer e a infligir sofrimento. Tudo se relaciona a mim como ser que eu sou. É somente do ponto-do-Ser onde eu, nós, podemos comentar. De outra forma estamos sempre do outro lado do campo de alguém, ou de um algum grupo [maio, 2026]
#evarocha #trapeze_artist/ Trapezista —artista é artista, o meio não é o fim. Minha vó materna costumava dizer: “tá fazendo arte!”