Mariela Scafati

Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1973

            Mariela Scafati's figure moves across the relations and tensions between canvas and body, activism and art, color theory and modernism. Born in Bahía Blanca, she graduated as a Visual Artist and Professor of Visual Arts. She has lived and worked in Buenos Aires since 1997 and, since 1998, coordinates screen printing workshops both independently and in different institutions. She defines herself as a screen painter and queer, and is a member of the group Cromoactivistas, whose activism is based on adding "words to color" and arguing that the use of color is not innocent but a bet on emotion, a micro-political gesture. 

            In her work, alchemy is part of her conciliatory energy, expressed through an art linked to work and action, with concrete pieces and installations that seek to present painting not as an image but as an object in space, with its own vitality. Recognized for her works of full colors, Scafati describes her work in tune with her affections, the people she relates to, her closest ties, and the way in which she translates body parts into paintings: "Fabriqué y vestí. Abrigué un cuadro con un buzo y las manos de la chica que me gusta con las mías, porque acordate: perdí la noción de la distancia. Y por esta causa, hice otras cosas también: martillé, imprimí, pinté.” [I manufactured and dressed. I wrapped a painting with a sweatshirt and the hands of the girl I like with mine, because remember: I lost the notion of distance. And because of this, I did other things too: I hammered, printed, painted.]

            In any of its formats, Scafati does not give up the coquettishness for figuration and plays with clothes, shoes, and accessories combined with frames, where the body is painting (or painting is body?) and is released to the arrogance of gravity and the morphology of perfect geometry. Her suspended canvases, sometimes with ropes and pulleys, sometimes tied up with the Japanese technique Shibari, of great erotic connotation, generate an immersive sculptural state. Her monochromatic palette further emphasizes the link between painting and body, giving each form an identity of its own.