Draughtswoman of Brazilian origin, born in 1957 in Rio de Janeiro, based in France.
Life
The only daughter of Catholic parents who converted to a Vodou cult, Marilena Pelosi was drawn to Surrealism as a teenager and dreamed of studying fine art. She never did, and is glad of it: this lack of training allowed her to build a personal iconography. She began drawing at sixteen, to fill her convalescence after a serious illness.
At twenty, to escape a forced marriage to a Vodou priest, she left Brazil and travelled in Europe and India, before settling in France, where she has lived for several decades. She is represented by the Galerie christian berst art brut in Paris.
The work
Pelosi draws in ballpoint pen, felt-tip, graphite, coloured pencils or watercolour, on paper or tracing paper. She never plans a composition and compares her way of working to that of spiritualists: it is her hands that guide the drawing.
Her sheets stage above all doll-like women, by turns executioners and victims, amid tears, water and blood. Laurent Danchin sees in them an autobiographical body of work, a symbolic synthesis in which memories of Vodou trances, diabolical carnivals and Eucharistic processions mingle with intimate reminiscences. Cataleptic or mutilated bodies, endless conveyor belts and armies of human-headed bees also recur.
Exhibitions and collections
- “Corps accords”, Art & Marges Museum, Brussels, 2010
- “Flying High”, Kunstforum, Vienna, 2019; “Blood Test”, Museum Dr Guislain, Ghent, 2019
- “Dangerous Love”, MuMo, Prague, 2023-2024
- Centre national des arts plastiques; Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou (2021); LaM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq (2025); Art & Marges Museum and Trinkhall, Belgium; INYE, Russia