Marilena Pelosi

Brazil, 1957

Marilena Pelosi was born in 1957 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She began drawing at the age of sixteen after succumbing to a serious illness. Pelosi was an only child and her parents were Catholic before converting to a voodoo cult. At the age of twenty, she left Brazil to travel to Europe and India, having settled in France. Cataleptic characters, mutilated and penetrated bodies, endless transporters, and human-headed bee armies are her most frequent topics. Marilena feels that her work is similar to the creation of spirits, both due to its mysticism and its unpredictability: she claims that she never plans a creation in advance – it is her hands that guide her. For Pelosi, the pleasure of revealing a scene through her imagination is the meaning of life.