Luiza Gebara Caramez

Bouquet de Aniversário (Desidratado), 2021

Oil on canvas
30 x 40 cm

Acarajé na Praça, 2022

Oil on canvas
40.64 x 40.64 cm

Jantar de Terça, 2021

Oil on canvas
27.6 x 35.2 cm

Melão de Café, 2021

Oil on wood panel
Three 25.4 x 25.4cm panels

Repolho Roxo, 2020

Oil on canvas
24x30 cm

Ovo Frito, 2020

Oil on canvas
20 x 25 cm

Artist Statement

My practice is about diving into a space of familiarity and abjection, it’s about creating alien worlds from the everyday.

Through meditation and transformation of the mundane, I give time and attention to what surrounds me to unlock their unnoticed potential. I choose objects that aren’t deemed of great importance and lavish them with the attention and close-lookingness that is normally reserved for things of great value.

Painting is a process of visceral release. I am drawn to organic matter, primarily food, because like myself, it lives, bleeds, and dies. Their skin, organs, and fluids are a mirror of my own, giving me the space to create intimate, cryptic anagrams of myself without ever revealing my appearance. My internal reflections materialize in the flesh-like landscapes and haptic texture of my work.

I use staging, lighting, photography, and digital manipulation to abstract the object from its original form. I am fascinated by the possibility of the micro and its capacity to house curious, defamiliarized things. By using manipulated photographs as a reference, I indulge in high levels of details in my paintings, producing visuals that resemble micrographs. My interest in the minute also translates into the scale of my work. Working on a small scale facilitates an intimate approximation between the viewer and the piece, an approximation that parallels my own when approaching the source objects.