CIÇA CALLEGARI | MAGICAL AND FASCINATING SYMBIOSIS | AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

CIÇA CALLEGARI | MAGICAL AND FASCINATING SYMBIOSIS

There is a magical and fascinating symbiosis in this process. I often become a tool in which portions of inert mass await me to be transformed and brought to life.” -Ciça Callegari

Finalist at the International Competition, a collaboration of the Florence Biennale, Art Market Magazine, and Lens Magazine.

Ciça Callegari (b. 1959, Brazil) lives and works between São Paulo and the countryside of Minas Gerais, where she keeps her studio. Callegari graduated in Journalism and Social Communications; she has worked in TV networks and in the video industry as a screenwriter, image editor, movie reporter, and cameraperson in Brazil and the US.
In 2005 she started her studies in ceramics, modeling, and sculpture, attending classes and workshops in art studios, art study groups, and sculpture schools in Brazil and Spain.
Even though Ciça Callegari uses her academic, artistic knowledge as a basis for her sculptures, this academicism is just the skeleton that sustains the emotion she conveys in each piece. Her sculptures summarize her social, political, and emotional milieu. They are caricatures of the human condition with a shot of humor, pain, and hope.

Callegari’s work has been shown in numerous Brazilians exibitions including: Mostra Coletiva 2020 (Supernova Arts, São Paulo, Brasil, web, 2020); Poéticas Concretas Soteropaulistanas (Museu da Misericórdia, Salvador, Brasil, 2019); Coletiva Ateliê Newton Santanna (Assembléia Legislativa, São Paulo, Brasil, 2018); Mostra Coletiva Onírica (Galeria Onírica, Gonçalves, Brasil, 2018); Assim é se lhe parece (Sala das Artes Clube Paulistano, São Paulo, Brasil, 2017); 5º Salão de Outono da América Latina – França /Brasil (Memorial da América Latina, São Paulo, Brasil, 2017); Universo Cerâmico I e II (Assembléia Legislativa, São Paulo, Brasil, 2016, 2017); Mostra Paralela (Paralela Arte e Design, São Paulo, Brasil, 2014); Circuito das Artes Jardim Botânico (Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2010).

“From journalism to sculpture, my professional turning point emerged from the need to give form to my emotions which up to then were restricted to text and camera-captured images.
I have a particular interest in human expressions and their capacity to transmit emotions such as anger, fear, pain, disgust, sorrow, and happiness through brief and subtle facial movements. Sculptures such as those by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, theories such as that of Paul Ekman, physiognomical studies from Duchenne, among others, are the backbone that meanders my sculptural work. Most of my characters are born out of clay, and thus I often say I play God when creating them. Clay’s plastic nature is playful, joyful and connects me with the ground, with my ancestry. It enables the transposition from my emotional and virtual universe to a tangible realm.
There is a magical and fascinating symbiosis in this process. I often become a tool in which portions of inert mass await me to be transformed and brought to life. The non-verbal communications of facial expressions, often lasting less than a second, are then immortalized in imaginary characters out of bronze, clay, wood, capturing and preserving the emotion I felt when creating them”.

Read the full interview article on Art Market Magazine Issue #60