Marara Kelly Press Conference, 2023
Auto-transfusion is a procedure practiced in traditional medicine and forbidden by so-called modern science, whereby a person is transfused with their own blood (instead of allogenic blood). The treatment increases the amount of red blood cells in the blood, which has beneficial effects such as boosting immunity and improving the physical performance of the self-transfused person.
Ma[y/r]ara is from Belém do Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon. She lived in Rio de Janeiro for almost ten years, where she went to drama school to fulfill her dream of becoming an actress. She also studied aesthetics and art theory at the university, where she specialized in performance theory and dramaturgy. For a while, she wondered if she should stop acting. In 2022, she graduated from the Ecole Cantonale d'Art de Lausanne with a Master's degree in Visual Arts. She always wanted to sing.
Displacement is the starting point of her artistic work. Creating a resonance between biography and cartography, the constant rewriting of her auto-biography allows her to reappropriate the territories in which she finds herself. At the center of her practice lies a process of transferal of the cultural codes of the Amazon, of the sacred, of ultra-pop and of street cultures. Always in motion, her projects are informed by political questions related to feminism, gender representations, body relations, and living and collective memories. She practices and explores pop culture, parties and the creatures of the night. In her performances, she practices exuberance and extravagance - eccentricity of bodies, sound and self. Kitsch is a methodology.
Since 2020, with the MK Art Show series, she writes the scripts that allow her to realize her dreams. The artist becomes a star. She strings together set after set, stage after stage, and tour after tour.. She invites the public to meet her in different moments of her career, be it her hotel room, an afterparty, and for the Espace Arlaud, a press conference.
In her projects, she approaches her collaborations like a theater group and practices the collective as a true ecology and work ethic. Press Conference was conceptualized in collaboration with Luca, who is always very present in both her fanbase as well as her team.
Ma[y/r]ara practices autophagy.
She digests her dreams and transforms them.
She hacks her biography, parasites her existence.
In auto-transfusion, they absorb themselves.
Today, for the first time, Marara Kelly has empathy for Mayara Yamada.
Julie Marmet (translation P23)
Work made in collaboration with Luca Frati.
Thanks to Fabio Jaramillo, Yann Longchamp, L'Abri - Genève, Julie Marmet, Alicia Segui and Inés Maestre for the banner design.
Performance (15’00’’), installation (banner, microphones, tripods, speakers, table, chairs)
Photo credits: Margot Sparkes