Marcia Albuquerque, from Rio de Janeiro, has been a graphic designer since 1999 and a visual artist in collage since 2011. Her work moves between manual and digital collage and assemblage, addressing memory and isolation as central themes. Through the fragmentation of images, she constructs narratives that overlap times and contexts, reinterpreting what already exists.
"I live between reflection and representation – everything can be a theme, everything can have a new meaning, everything can bother me to the point of making me want to look at it more often. Things have magnets that pull you. I am pulled at every moment – I sink and submerge several times until I myself discover the buoy, the path, the meaning..."
Her process is based on chance. Each composition is a dive into the search for images (and materials), a game between fragments and appropriations.
How did your journey into the art world begin?
I have always been exposed to art. I was encouraged to do so since I was a child. I was raised by a great-aunt, Nina, a doctor, an avid reader, and a lover of books and the arts. I started ballet at age 3 and left at 18. I started playing the piano at age 8, then went on to play the guitar, flute... and today I'm dying to play the tambourine, lol. When I went to college, it was natural to choose Industrial Design (that was the name at the time), although I also wanted to be a washerwoman, an archaeologist, a biologist, a landscaper, an architect... Collage came from watching my mother cover paint cans with pages from National Geographics to use as storage for the children's shoes; there were three of us children. As a teenager, I covered the covers of notebooks with clippings; all teenagers did that back then. As an adult, I would “steal” pages from magazines in doctors’ offices. I was terrified that they would catch me or that if I asked, the nurses wouldn’t let me take the pages... in fact, I always “cannibalized” magazines and spent all my allowance at the newsstand. I took up collage again as an adult, around 2010/11. A few years later, I met my husband, Mauricio Planel, also a collage artist, and from then on, everything in my house has been inspired by collage.
Art has always seemed a natural language to me, just like reading, writing, eating, breathing.
What themes do you prefer to explore in your works?
I used to think that my themes were whatever I was seeing at the time, but after you do an activity for a while, you soon notice a confluence of attention towards certain themes. It is a construction that happens through doing and not through planning. Analyzing it this way, I see that my works have always resulted in images that refer to “memory” and “loneliness”.
In 2016, I participated in an exhibition (which I will talk about later) that was very emblematic for me. It was in Paraty, with the collective Colagistas Sin Fronteras (which brought together collagists from Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) and whose theme was “The Other”. I developed a series of 7 works, printed in A2, called “The border of memory and the subversion of the bridge” where I addressed the loss of memory by connecting separate elements to each other, with bridges. It took me a year to make this series. It came from the gigantic memory loss of my great aunt that I mentioned above, who passed away a few years later. This lady always had a privileged memory and the loss of this characteristic was very impactful for me. In this same exhibition, I created an assemblage made of dozens of glass planters, like aquariums, each with a person positioned inside and with the glass connected to each other. They could see each other, but could not touch (in 2016, already foreseeing the Covid pandemic, lol).
What are your sources of inspiration?
Everything is a source, but in times of excessive digital distractions, this “everything is a source” can paralyze you.
I have found myself in this place of paralysis due to excess information several times, so today I need to police myself a lot. I carry (and have always done so) a small notebook in my bag because it helps me select what is worthwhile. If I am walking down the street, or standing in a square, or at the bus stop and something catches my attention, I try to record it by writing/describing or drawing quickly. Sometimes I go years without opening these repositories, but when I do open them, it seems like a light goes on in me, I pull the thread of reasoning that I had when I made the record. I can read something that catches my attention, I can see a shape, a color, the position of an object. Both “things” and words can be a starting point for beginning a work.
I'll give you an example that just came to mind: I want to go back to therapy, and as I've been thinking about how deep and painful it can be to address certain issues in consultations, I thought I could bring this meaning of "therapy/search/encounter" to a physical object. So I started creating spheres by gluing strips and strips of paper that I had torn by hand, one on top of the other, to be "peeled" by people. There will always be something inside them. Can you imagine how difficult it is to peel off thin strips of glued paper, which will tear shapelessly, at varying speeds?
What materials and techniques do you use most often?
As for materials, I use magazines, which are unfortunately rare to find these days. Good magazines are disappearing. I only find them through friends who want to get rid of theirs or in second-hand bookstores - I miss the newsstands full of wonderful magazines.
For assemblages, I prefer wood, metal and glass. I avoid plastic. I collect some things that I find on the street, playing cards - there are times when there are a lot of cards on the ground, I don't know why lol, little pieces of paper, keys and anything small that is easy to store.
As for the technique, it is always collage (digital or manual), and within collage (manual) there are several techniques. The great Jiří Kolář - Czech artist and poet and considered one of the most representative names in 20th century art, and whose work I came to know through Maurico Planel, created and named many of them as: Rollage, Prollage, Froissage, Anti-collagem.
Who are the artistic influences that have impacted your work?
Even though I work with collage, I avoid looking at collages, lol. I look more at painters like Eduardo Berliner and Cadu. I love seeing the recent works of engraver and illustrator Rubem Grilo and all of the illustrator Lula Palomanes. As for collage, I can tell you that I really enjoy the work of Russian Collage - lol. The aesthetics of Mauricio Planel and Samuel Eller are very good, their work is very well resolved both in terms of visual composition and theme. Both of them are very consistent in their work.
What is the meaning of art in your life?
My form of communication is based on the act of “breaking and gluing” because this dynamic reflects life itself. We are all made of reconstituted fragments. Art - be it collage, painting, drawing, writing, singing or dancing - is yet another way of translating this reality. When different languages overlap to express similar ideas, the same fragments are reorganized in new ways, creating multiple compositions and expanding our perceptions. Art is a door that leads to another, and to another, on a path of discovery.
What advice would you offer to artists just starting out?
Advice is only useful for us, lol, that's why I feel more comfortable giving it, because I try to apply what I say on my days of procrastination... my advice is: start now, with what you have at hand. Don't wait for the right time to come or for the right material to be bought. Don't wait for the master teacher to appear or for inspiration to come upon your head. Start now, today, at this moment, and use what you have available around you. Often, just a pencil stub is enough. Thinking about doing something won't get you anywhere. Doing it today is what gets you there.
Have you participated in any notable exhibitions that you would like to share?
I have participated in several exhibitions over the years, not only in Brazil, but also in Poland, Spain, Uruguay, Peru... almost all of them collective.
Exhibitions are a great exercise in focus. It is always a long process, where you need to know exactly what you want.
As I said before, the exhibition in Paraty - 2016 was an immersion into the issue of “memory”. The first international exhibition is also a milestone – it was at the Pera de Goma gallery, in Uruguay. In the same way, the first solo exhibition works as a thermometer, it was at the Espaço Sérgio Porto gallery - RJ with the series “Texturas de um Sistema”, where I presented 26 digital works in different formats with works made for a book collection.
