Marcia Falcão

Painting with solid gestures and thick paint layers, Márcia Falcão articulates relationships between the female body and pictorial matter. The artist’s tackles motifs from the carioca suburbs where she grew up, lives and works. Her palette, with its prevalent browns, reds and other skin tones, seeks to represent fleshy bodies. Márcia Falcão's paintings' aggressiveness falls mainly upon the feminine figures that inhabit them. Here, the flesh is punctured, cut, lacerated and burned in a reenactment of the systemic violence threatening women's lives, mainly black and from peripheral areas in Brazil.

 

In other works, on the otherhand, there are equally visceral scenes of ecstasy, ushering in a polarity between pleasure and pain. The sensorial excitement of Falcão's painting owes to the urgency of her subject as much as the artist's lived experience in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

 

Márcia Falcão was born in 1985 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she lives and works today. The artist has exhibited in both Brazil and the United States and is featured prominently in this year’s 36th São Paulo Biennial, curated by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, which just opened.

 

Falcão’s works are included in important public collections, including the Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Brazil; the Marquez Family Collection in Miami, USA; the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro; and the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, USA.

 

Recent exhibitions include: NOSSA VIDA BANTU, Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group - 2025); FUNK: Um grito de ousadia e liberdade, Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group - 2025); Imensuráveis, Inclusatriz, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group - 2025); Rio de Corpo e Alma, Museu Histórico da Cidade, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group - 2025); Mary With(Out) Child, GNYP Gallery, Antwerp, Netherlands (group - 2024); Marquez Art Projects, Miami, USA (group - 2024); Mirror of the Mind: Figuration in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, Miami, USA (group - 2024); RAW ! HOA & FDAG, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (group - 2024); Corpo-casa : Diálogos entre Carolee Schneeman, Diego Bianchi e Márcia Falcão, Pivô, São Paulo, Brazil (group - 2024); Monuments of Flesh, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (solo - 2024); Márcia Falcão - Pai contra mãe; Interseções – diálogos entre a arte contemporânea e a literatura, Instituto Inclusartiz, Riode Janeiro, Brazil (solo - 2023); Funk ! Um grito de ousadia e liberdade, MAR – Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (group - 2023); Comporta 2023, Casa de Cultura da Comporta, Comporta, Portugal (group - 2023); The Big Picture, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (group - 2023); Márcia Falcão at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo (solo - 2022).