Maria Nepomuceno: Refloresta!
The Portico Library, Manchester, United Kingdom
July 1 – November 22, 2021
Maria Nepomuceno: Refloresta! at The Portico Library, Manchester.
The Portico Library is pleased to present Refloresta!, an installation of immersive sculptural and textile works by Maria Nepomuceno. These expansive sculptures combine fluid, organic forms with vivid colours and traditional rope-weaving and straw-braiding techniques. They are shown alongside natural history books and archive materials from the Library’s 19th-century collection illustrating Manchester’s international and colonial connections during the city’s formative years. With spiral patterns evoking biological and spiritual themes, Maria’s brightly-coloured artworks bring the vibrancy of the natural world into the Library’s tranquil interior.
As we emerge from a devastating pandemic, Maria Nepomuceno asks us to remember the emergency of our time. Her exhibition’s title, Refloresta!, means ‘reforest’ in Brazilian Portuguese. It evokes the environment in which the artworks were conceived—Maria’s studio among the towering fruit trees of Rio de Janeiro—and her wish for the world to come together to reverse the deforestation still ravaging the globe. In a room and a city that bear the scars of industry—books blackened with Victorian soot and civic spaces devoid of wildlife—Nepomuceno’s organically shaped sculptures and the Library’s natural history books that accompany them remind us of what we could create: green, biologically diverse cities where multicolour life—and multicolour ideas—thrive.
Maria Nepomuceno will have a solo exhibition at Sikkema Jenkins & Co in January 2022. Maria Nepomuceno: Refloresta! is on view July 1 through November 22, 2021. For more information, click here.