FEEL Marisa Bernotti

Описание: Artist Statement

When we feel from the senses, a sensation is produced in us from an external stimulus or from our own body, while when what we feel affects our state of mind or emotional disposition regarding a thing, a fact or a person, this becomes a feeling.

Is it possible to separate the senses from the feelings?
Is it possible to feel without feeling?

"Feel" is a project thought from the feelings and the senses composed of several series of work: "First semester 2020", "Handbags that are not handbags", "Journal" and "Endometriosis"

I like to explore the strong contrast between what others want to see in us and what we really are, what we really know about ourselves. Others have preconceptions about us, and even when we explain our true nature, they continue to impose their perceptions.

The Journal drawings are a series about myself. I have been writing in datebook journals since I was 13, and I saved all of them. In this journal I write about what I must do—pay bills, remember birthdays, attend meetings as a business woman, or keep appointments as a mother. I always drew in my journal without thinking too much about it. I realized some time ago that what I had been drawing, the characters, abstractions, animals, houses, were all part of an absurd world that exists in my imagination.

This helped me to recognize that I had not only always wanted to be an artist, but that I had actually always been an artist, and my journal was where I made my artwork. My studio practice now includes mining imagery from all different years. I scan in pages of the journals and paint them, consciously developing the imagery that had flowed from my unconscious brain.

At the same time, I am developing a series called, "Handbags that are not Handbags."
In these works, the handbags are deconstructed and reinvented with paint and sculptural additions. Like the journal drawings, they address the difference between the way others see us and the way we feel inside. I want to make the viewer feel uncomfortable because they see a bag, but it does not function as a bag anymore.

Both series include fluorescent colors that glow in black light. Even if you want to hide in the darkness, your light will appear. You must show who you really are, no matter who that is. Each individual has their own light.

"Endometriosis" is an unfinished work. At the age of 16 I spent more than three months hospitalized for a diagnosis that did not materialize: bleeding, hemorrhage, pain, clot, puncture, curettage, anemia, more bleeding, transfusion, more pain, infertility, gastritis, tachycardia, vitamins, veins, more pain, a lot of pain, disabling pain, endometriosis. More than a year of suffering made me wish gone, I said goodbye to my family, I didn't want to suffer any more.
Endometriosis is the presence of endometrial tissue outside the uterus. Most of the time, these foci of endometriosis are found in the pelvic area over the peritoneum, in the ovaries, the intestine or the bladder.
Being one of the most prevalent pathologies in women, it is a disabling disease still unknown even to the medical community, which insists on the need to investigate pain and its causes in order to treat it.


Short Bio
Marisa Bernotti (1978), Uruguay. Graphic design (1999) and Bachelor ś Degree in Economics (2005). Bernotti is a multi - disciplinary artist. In 2013 the Board of Soriano in Uruguay, granted her public recognition for her fundamental contribution to the development of the land in artistic activity. In the same year, she was selected as an artist of Mercosur for her exhibition "Eyes that speak, mouths that remain silent", a show for women's rights. She was a finalist for the Poster of the 19th Montevideo Children's and Youth Book Fair in 2019. In 2020 she participated in the SVA Residencies in Art Practice. Their work was exhibited in many countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, Italy and the United States. Bernotti bases her work on feelings, the news, the frivolity of the moment, excess, disease and injustice, which she recreates with her own imagination. Her practice asks and imagines what we feel uncertain about. She expresses this with an excess of color and a vivid palette in unimaginable combinations. She works on canvas, papers, books, textile, objects, builds puppets, and does performance. Bernotti is also involved with the I found U global collective of interdisciplinary artists.