Mariana and Naomi

 

Today, we speak with artists Mariana Perissinotto and Naomi Shida, together with the exhibition’s curator, Leonardo Augusto, about "Bruma sobre o mar, trama sobre a pele", presented by Galeria EXL in partnership with MONO Lisboa.

Bringing together two distinct artistic practices, the exhibition unfolds around shared ideas of body, memory, transformation and materiality. Mariana Perissinotto works primarily through painting, building and eroding layers of pigment to create images that seem suspended between figuration and disappearance. Naomi Shida, meanwhile, moves between textiles, sculpture, painting and installation, constructing hybrid bodies through fabric, embroidery, organic materials and symbolic elements connected to the sea, transition and identity.

Although their visual languages differ, the two practices meet through a common interest in the body as something unstable, vulnerable and constantly in flux — shaped by memory, environment, experience and change. In our conversation with Mariana, Naomi and Leonardo, we explore the origins of this dialogue, the role of physical process and materiality in their work, and the curatorial approach behind bringing these two voices together in Lisbon.

 

Raquel, over the past few years, EXL Galeria has worked very closely with emerging women artists, supporting processes that often begin with residencies, develop through exhibitions, and lead to new opportunities for circulation. How do you understand EXL’s role within this context, and in what ways has this work helped increase the visibility of these artists and create pathways for their entry into, and continuity within, the art market?

Raquel:
EXL was born precisely from the desire to create a space where artists at the beginning of their careers could find genuine conditions in which to develop and present their work. From the outset, we have paid particular attention to the work of women artists and to the different subjectivities that inform their practices, especially because we know that significant inequalities still exist in terms of access, representation, and circulation within the art system.

Over time, we came to understand that providing an exhibition space, although essential, was not enough. Our work gradually evolved into a more sustained form of support: getting to know the artists’ research, following its development, organising residencies, exhibitions, and encounters, introducing artists to curators, collectors, and other professionals within the field, and, whenever possible, creating new opportunities for their work to circulate.

The residency held in 2022 is an important example of this process. Some of the artists we worked with at that time continued to develop their practices in the years that followed, and we continued to accompany their trajectories. Mariana and Naomi’s exhibition in Lisbon is, in a way, an extension of that relationship: practices we began following at an earlier stage are now entering into dialogue with a new space, a different audience, and an international context.

I believe EXL has increasingly become a platform for continuity. Rather than presenting an artist at one particular moment, we aim to build relationships that can endure, mature, and open new pathways. This means helping artists gain greater visibility, but also supporting them in building networks, developing professional relationships, and finding concrete opportunities to establish themselves within the market.

Something else that is very important to us is preserving the singularity of each artist’s research. We do not want to define a particular model of artist or prescribe a specific visual language. Instead, we try to provide structure, dialogue, and opportunities so that each practice can develop and reach new spaces without losing what makes it distinctive.

In this sense, I see EXL as a platform for support and circulation: a space capable of welcoming an artistic practice at a particular stage and, from there, building bridges so that the work can continue to find new audiences, interlocutors, and possibilities.

 

Leonardo, what brought Mariana and Naomi’s practices together in this exhibition? What kind of dialogue did you perceive between their works from the beginning?

Leonardo:
This connection began long before the exhibition itself. Mariana and Naomi participated in the same artist residency at EXL, whose programme already involved reflecting on women’s artistic production, their subjectivities, and the ways in which these experiences inform artistic creation. Since then, both have continued to work intensively, and their practices have developed in different directions.

Over the years, we have also built a close relationship with both artists and followed the development of their work. This made it possible to identify points of connection despite the very clear differences in technique, language, and poetics.

What interested me was seeing how visually distinct practices could emerge from questions that touch one another: the body, experience, transition, and the construction of subjectivity. There is also an important continuity with discussions that began during the residency, particularly around women’s artistic production and the ways in which these practices transform and mature over time.

 

The title "Bruma sobre o mar, trama sobre a pele — Mist over the Sea, Weave over the Skin" — is very evocative. What does it mean to you, and how did it emerge during the development of the exhibition?

Leonardo:
The title was not exactly the starting point of the exhibition. The curatorial process began with a methodological approach to bringing Mariana and Naomi’s practices into dialogue: we sought to understand what each artist had been producing and to identify themes, questions, and processes that could create points of connection between their works.

The selection of works emerged from this process. Later, as we reflected on the exhibition as a whole, certain images and words began to appear: mist and its texture, what it conceals or allows us to glimpse; the sea; weaving; corporeality; skin. The title emerged from this reflection and from an attempt to poetically condense relationships that were already present within the works.

Naomi:
The title emerged quite organically from conversations between us and with Leonardo. Throughout the process, we began to discover points of connection between our practices that went beyond the fact that we had both been artists-in-residence at EXL during the same period.

There were thematic affinities, but also connections related to technique, materiality, and corporeality. So the exhibition did not begin with the title; rather, our reflections on the works gradually led us towards it.

Mariana:
We began thinking about words that could somehow summarise the dialogues taking place between the works. “Mist” and “weave” are very closely connected to the materiality and processes present in the works, while “sea” and “skin” relate more directly to the questions and themes that run through our practices.

The title ultimately brought these different fields together.

 

Mariana and Naomi, your works seem to engage strongly with surface, texture, and materiality. How important is the physical process of making within your respective practices?

Mariana:
In my work, the physical process is directly connected to its poetic dimension. Mist, for example, which often appears in my paintings as a kind of haze, is created through the technique itself.

I work with successive layers of paint that are later sanded down. During this process, parts of the image are erased or destroyed; some remain, while others are reconstructed or receive new interventions. This continuous movement between construction, erasure, and reconstruction produces images that seem to be dissolving, suspended somewhere between what is still visible and what is disappearing.

For this reason, I find it difficult to separate technique, materiality, and poetics. The process of sanding, wearing down, and rebuilding the surface is itself fundamental to what the image ultimately produces.

Naomi:
Materiality is fundamental to my creative process, particularly because much of my work develops through textile art and three-dimensional forms.

These material choices are directly connected to my poetic research and to the way I work with the body as a central element, even when it appears in a more abstract or symbolic form.

They are embroidered bodies and bodies constructed through narratives related to my perception of processes of transition. The texture of the pieces, their scale, the materials I choose, and even certain figurative elements all participate in the construction of meaning.

Figures such as the vulture or barnacle, for example, do not appear in isolation. They belong to a material and symbolic vocabulary that forms part of the wider research.

 

The exhibition moves between ideas of body, landscape, memory, and matter. Do you see the body here as something physical, symbolic, or perhaps even as a kind of landscape in itself?

Naomi:
In my practice, the body is closely connected to a symbolic dimension. The works speak about bodies, but that does not necessarily mean representing the human figure literally.

I am interested in thinking about a body traversed by time and by processes of transition.

Although this research relates to my own experience, I do not want to limit these bodies to a specific gender framework. They can carry different processes of transition and establish relationships with the context in which I live, including issues connected to Brazil.

The body therefore appears as a symbolic field in which different experiences and temporalities can be processed.

Mariana:
In my work, the body is above all a way of approaching experiences and lived situations rather than an object of representation in itself.

My painting seeks to translate certain emotions and human experiences, and the body is one of the ways of doing that.

Recently, I have been particularly interested in the relationship between body and space, and in the sensations this relationship can generate: isolation, belonging, solitude.

In each work, the body can take on a different dimension. Sometimes it dissolves and almost disappears into the atmosphere or landscape; in other works, it becomes more concrete, more visible, or more withdrawn.

It functions as a means of addressing other questions that are central to my research.

 

There is a strong sense of fragility and transformation throughout the exhibition. Are these qualities something you consciously work with, or do they emerge naturally through your materials and processes?

Mariana:
At first, these were not themes I worked with in an entirely conscious way. Gradually, however, I realised that fragility and transformation appeared repeatedly, both within the poetic dimension of the work and in the process of making itself.

Some works involve displacement, journeys, or movement, while others contain figures in situations of isolation or greater vulnerability.

At the same time, these qualities began to appear very clearly in the technical procedures. The recurring use of scraping and, especially, sanding creates images that seem to be coming apart. The surface becomes physically vulnerable: it is constructed, worn down, and worked again.

Today, I am much more conscious of these questions, but they developed gradually through the evolution of the painting itself and the processes I began to use.

Naomi:
In my case, these are questions I work with very consciously, because my creative process is deeply connected to the idea of transition — initially through my own experience of gender transition, and later extending towards more collective questions.

This understanding also developed through the ambiguities that emerged during the process of making. In the embroidered bodies, I try to communicate these transitions through texture, scale, and material choice.

Fragility and transition are therefore very closely connected.

In the series related to shipwreck, for example, the body appears adrift at sea and undergoes transformations as a result of this new relationship with its environment. What interests me is precisely a body that, when it encounters other conditions, does not remain intact: it changes and begins to exist differently.

 

Mariana and Naomi, are there recurring materials, gestures, or motifs within this exhibition that are particularly closely connected to your own personal histories or experiences?

Mariana:
My work is strongly connected to personal experience. Many of my paintings begin with situations I have lived through, although I am not interested in transforming them into literal narratives.

What I try to translate is primarily the feeling associated with a particular experience.

That is why a certain sense of suspended time frequently appears, as though a moment could be prolonged within the painting.

These experiences are transformed through colour, form, gesture, and through the construction of the surface itself. The starting point may be personal, but what interests me is how a feeling can acquire another form of existence within painting.

Naomi:
My work also emerges from a very intimate relationship with my own experiences and personal history, particularly through questions surrounding the body and my experience of being transgender.

Over time, however, I began to understand this research beyond a strictly individual experience.

My gender transition was initially processed through my work in a very personal way. As I came to understand this process more deeply, I also began looking for elements that could connect it to collective experiences and to other bodies undergoing processes of symbolic, social, or material transition.

Certain motifs return frequently, such as the chair, the vulture, fishhooks, fish, and other elements connected to territory and the sea. Together, they form a recurring vocabulary that allows me to continue investigating these questions.

 

Leonardo, when curating an exhibition with two distinct voices, how do you balance the creation of a clear shared narrative while allowing each artist’s individual language to remain distinct?

Leonardo:
The proximity we have built over the years and my knowledge of Mariana and Naomi’s practices were fundamental.

Their work is very different in terms of language, processes, and poetics, and I was never interested in eliminating those differences in order to create an artificial sense of unity.

The common narrative emerged precisely from recognising questions that run through the works in different ways.

There is a reflection on the human condition and contemporary experience; questions related to women’s artistic production, bodies, and different ways of inhabiting them also appear.

There are further elements such as suspended time, solitude, and particular ways of thinking about the relationship between body, memory, and experience.

The curatorial approach sought to work from these points of connection while keeping the differences visible. The dialogue exists precisely because one work does not need to say the same thing as another; relationships can be created through the distance between their respective languages.

 

To what extent was the exhibition conceived specifically for MONO’s space? Did the architecture or atmosphere of the gallery influence the final selection or installation?

Mariana:
The works were not produced specifically for the exhibition space, but MONO’s architecture played an important role in how we approached the installation and also influenced the final selection.

Because it is a large space, we were able to work with larger-scale works and to think about a route through which visitors could move between them.

We were also interested in exploring the relationship between two-dimensional works and Naomi’s three-dimensional pieces, allowing different languages to inhabit the space and establish relationships throughout the exhibition.

At the same time, EXL forms part of the history of these practices. We both took part in an artist residency there in 2022 and spent approximately a year working intensively within that space.

EXL therefore played an important role in the development of our practices, even though the works presented now were not created specifically for that location.

Naomi:
The residency at EXL was fundamental to the construction and development of our practices. The works presented today are the result of several years of development following that period.

For this exhibition, MONO’s architecture was particularly important in helping us think about how two very different practices could inhabit the same space.

The selection of works and their placement were intended precisely to create these connections without erasing the individual characteristics of each practice.

 

What do you hope viewers notice first when they enter the exhibition: the materiality, the image, the atmosphere, or the relationship between the works?

Naomi:
I hope the audience first perceives the atmosphere created by the exhibition as a whole.

This includes both the indirect relationships the works establish with one another and the way they inhabit MONO’s space.

I am also interested in allowing viewers to see how two artists with different references, techniques, and processes can create dialogues through themes that intersect at different moments.

Mariana:
For me, it is also primarily about the atmosphere.

Both Naomi’s work and mine can create quite immersive experiences, and I believe there is a continuity within each practice that changes when the two are placed in relation to one another.

Material and image are obviously important, but perhaps atmosphere is what brings all these dimensions together.

I hope visitors can perceive how the works complement one another precisely through both their similarities and their differences.

 

@exl.orbi

@naomi.shida

@marianaperissinotto

@leonardoaugustoco