Visual artist and photographer, Aline Mota studied Social Communication at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and concluded her cinema post-graduate studies at The New School University, in New York. She worked as a script supervisor for over a decade, a time during which she participated in the production of the films O Homem do Futuro (2011), by Cláudio Torres and Corações Sujos (2012), by filmmaker Vicente Amorim.
Her production makes use of multiple languages such as photography, video, collage and other supports. Her more recent works create a narrative from the autobiographical dimensions that reach out to collective memory in aspects such as slavery, Brazil’s patriarchal structure, ancestrality and the whitening of the Afro-Brazilian population.
Bringing together art and research in her artistic practice, Aline seeks to rework memories and to resignify ways of life, also exposing her link with anti-racist resistance. Working across disciplines, she has carried out exhibitions, national and international artistic residences and participated in cinema festivals.
In My Neighbour’s Clothesline (Varal do meu vizinho – 2008-2012) she works the palette of colors and forms in the elements hung out to dry by her upstairs neighbor that she sees from her window; in the book and installation Job’s Slaves (Escravos de Jó – 2016), Aline takes us through an investigative journey through her ancestrality as the artist intensely mixes word and image, straining elements to create poetry from a critical rereading of Brazilian slavery by means of a simple children’s game, in the trilogy encompassing three essays: Bridges Over Abysses (Pontes sobre abismos – 2017), If the Sea Had Balconies (Se o mar tivesse varandas – 2017) and one titled (Other) Foundamentals [(Outros) Fundamentos – 2017-2019].
Her project Memory Game (Jogo da memória), grounded on literary tools to narrate stories lived within the context of the home, featuring a photographic essay with such fabulations and presented as an artist’s book, was contemplated by the Zum Photography Grant, offered by Instituto Moreira Salles in 2018.
Aline won the 7th Marcantonio Vilaça National Industry Award in 2019. She was part of the group exhibition When the World Changes – questions about art and feminisms (Cuando cambia el mundo – preguntas sobre arte y feminismos, Buenos Aires, 2021). In 2022 her first book was launched, Water is a Time Machine (A Água é uma máquina do tempo), in which she addresses several comprehensions and dimensions of this element in Afro-Brazilian culture and its relation with the multiplicity of time. She was invited by the São Paulo Serviço Social do Comércio (Sesc) to mount the installation Kalunga Machine (Máquina Kalunga), in the same year, at the institution’s Belenzinho branch.
Yara Schreiber Dines
Excerpts
“Much of my work is about my own family, especially about my granny. Grandmothers concentrate the powers of cure in our community. As they mediate conflicts, grannies know that conflict is foundation, and conflict mediation is also foundation. Therefore, in my case, lineage is language. My granny’s performance is a collective performance of all grandmothers. It is the performance of a whole lineage of women, which is manifested in multimedia and in multidirections, acting and facing several affective layers, sometimes traumatic. They are ancestral plurivoices.
lyra.org/index.php/elyra/article/view/422/457, accessed on 20/01/2023.
“I hope that such conservative movements, which, in reality, amount to an attack on life (in the after all they are discourses of death), turn against one another. We must realize that Black culture in our country is a culture of resistance, therefore life-affirming and driven towards the emancipation of being, by means of processes experienced collectively. This goes against such movements of profoundly individualistic motivation, narcissistic, militarily hierarchized, which do not take into account life lived in common.”
https://artebrasileiros.com.br/arte/premio/aline-motta-e-o-mergulho-pessoal-na-memoria-coletiva/, accessed on 19/02/2023.
Bibliography
DINES, Yara Schreiber. Aline Motta. The Substance of Images. Brazilian Women Photographers. São Paulo: Editora Grifo, 2021.
https://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa637831/aline-motta.
https://files.cargocollective.com/624463/Way-in-Way-out—Alexandre-Arau-jo-Bispo.pdf.
Translation: Gavin Adams
