My work is based on the idea of expanded drawing, centered on a dialogue between drawing and embroidery through the element of line. Using the line as the main element and relating it to the idea of the thread of life, a material relationship is established with the thread, considering it as a passage of the drawn line to three-dimensional materiality.
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As a way to materialize this expansion, I work with a lot of material experimentation: different fabrics, papers, canvases. Currently, I think of surfaces with transparency as a way of expanding the line, so that the focus is on it and on the trajectory of the thread that is visible from the transparency (the path of the process marked on the surface, as a way of perceiving what is happening on the inside/on the back of the fabric).
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Based on this relationship between the back of the surface and the inside, and between the body and the act of embroidery, the main themes of the work are focused on the sensitive possibilities of the body in the world: how it absorbs experiences in the interior territory, and how it expresses itself on the outside. Transparency as a support for expansion can also be related as an attempt to go against invisibility, turning visible what is usually not accessed.
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In my practice there is a big sensory relation between the body and the materiality of the process, maintaining the gesture of the drawing in the embroidery. The memory of the thread path is connected with the sewing process, but also with the creation of the base drawing, which is usually made from a continuous line. With this, everything intertwines and forms a connection between the portrayed figures. I work mostly with the representation of bodies, including my own. There is a focus on individual narratives that can expand to the collective, relating issues of identity, memory, time, feelings and experiences.
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Considering the body as the major means of contact with the world, I feel that representing people is a way of entering into the intimacy of the other and into the possible connections that may result from this contact, even if only in the visual field. In this way, the idea of the thread of life means that each of these bodies represented in the work, formed by lines, can expand and intertwine with others, resulting in possible shared experiences.
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Júlia Mazzoni
2023