Mule (2018) Sculpture by Aledra

Aledra was born in 1981 in Porto Ferreira, Sao Paulo, Brazil. She grew up in the state capital after being born in the interior city of Porto Ferreira. At 14, she started drawing, which led to painting with acrylics on canvases made by her father. 

Aledra attended São Paulo’s prestigious Academy of Art Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP), where she learned more about art. She is mostly self-taught because her university studies were interrupted. 

From 2009 to 2012, Aledra experimented with jewelry design, goldsmithing, and gemology. During this period, she curated art, directed art, and wrote for Psicanalitica Magazine of art and culture. 

In 2014, Aledra resumed her study in visual arts with an emphasis on contemporary painting with artists Deborah Paiva, Bruno Dunley, and Paulo Pasta at the Tomie Ohtake Institute in Sao Paulo. She participated in three collective exhibitions during this period. 

Aledra's work with oil paints introduced muted colors and opaque textures into her work, which developed the organic forms that appeared in her previous drawings. Her artistic style also includes sculpture, which she started creating with materials such as tissue and later ceramics.

The artist's work is a product of her imagination, drawing inspiration from various fields such as history, philosophy, Art Brut, and the history of dress. In her creative process, she relies on her experiences, which inform her reflexive and intuitive approach. Her work is characterized by a focus on values such as harmony and composition, which coexist with contemporary aesthetics that reject conventional notions of beauty and embrace asymmetry. Despite this, the artist regards beauty as an indispensable component of her work.

The artist's exploration of form has led her to create shoes, which have become a recurring theme in her work. These shoes have been depicted in her garatujas or doodles and take on a three-dimensional form in her ceramic and concrete sculptures. In some works, the artist explores the symbolic form of shoes, while in others, she seeks to distill their essence, attempting to discover their primordial image in the collective unconscious, reducing them to their abstract essence.

The artist has been recognized for her work, having participated in the III Art Auction of the XX Arte in 2020 and having her work selected for the New York Magazine of Literature, The Brooklyn Review, in 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the artist with new opportunities, and she has taken to exploring new forms of artistic expression, such as cooking. This has resulted in a series of dessert photographs, which evoke sensory pleasure similar to that inspired by her paintings, sculptures, and jewelry.

The artist's production is characterized by a sense of desire and playful elements that inspire sensory pleasure. Her work is a testament to the power of imagination and the ability to create beauty out of seemingly ordinary objects.

• Nationality: BRAZIL
• Date of birth : unknown date
• Artistic domains: Represented by a Gallery,
• Groups: Contemporary Brazilian Artists Artists presented by a gallery