Martha Araujo

Martha Araújo is a wellknown Brazilian sculptor and performance artist.

Biography of Martha Araújo

Martha Araújo was born in 1943 in Maceió, Brazil. She pursued her education at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, graduating in 1970. She went on to earn a master's degree in education from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro in 1977.

From 1984 to 1987, Araújo worked with the sculptor Haroldo Barroso at the Museu do Ingá in Niterói. In 1986, she furthered her studies at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro.

Despite her education being primarily based in Rio de Janeiro, Araújo has lived most of her life in Maceió, distant from Brazil's major art centers. This peripheral position has kept her work relatively obscure, although she has been exhibiting since the 1980s and was awarded at the 10th Salão Carioca de Artes in Rio de Janeiro in 1986.

In the early 1980s, Araújo began crafting what she termed "performatic objects"—wearable textile pieces that encouraged public interaction, blending performance and sculpture. She has since continued to create sculptures and participatory installations across various mediums. Recently, Araújo has delved into photography and video to explore the construction of subjectivity. Over the past decade, her work has garnered increasing attention from the art world both in Brazil and internationally.

In 2014, Martha Araújo took part in the XII Bienal de Cuenca, Artevida: Parque at EAV/Parque Lage in Rio de Janeiro, and the III Mostra do Programa de Exposições 2014 at the Centro Cultural São Paulo as a guest artist.

Martha Araújo's Art Style

Martha Araújo’s body of work has become increasingly significant as it emerged during a pivotal period in Brazilian history—right at the end of a long dictatorship and into the early years of democracy. Her work powerfully and poetically captures the yearning for freedom after decades of repression.

Araújo’s oeuvre explores how the body is intricately connected to the world, how the self negotiates relationships, and the implicit social contracts that govern our interactions, whether in love or peace. Her distinctive poetic language weaves together bodies, materials, and forces, highlighting the interplay of relationships and emotions between individuals and their environments. By creating sensory phenomenological exercises, Araújo offers new ways of understanding our existence in the world and questions the processes of world-making. Her sensibility emphasizes the body as the primary realm of human expression.