Aline Motta

With her artistic practice, Aline Motta (b. 1974, Niterói, Brazil) seeks to point out and fill in the gaps in her own family history as a result of colonial erasure. Her videos, photographs, installations, and performances are based on speculative studies that mix archival research, field trips, and oral history reports that she uses to access, nourish, and reveal parts of the past that were previously thought to be lost. Refusing the linear organization of time and instead understanding the past as part of the present, Motta creates works that reorient memories and construct new narratives. Reflecting on notions of diaspora, belonging, and identification she reconfigures Afro-Atlantic relations in her own ways, positioning herself as the author of her own history. Blurring the boundaries between what is known and what is imagined, Motta's works demonstrate how envisioning new pasts can free us from old narratives and manifest new futures.

Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil. Aline earned a bachelor degree in Communication Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and a Certificate in Film Production at the New School University/New York. She has received the Rumos Itaú Cultural 2015/2016 grant, earned the ZUM Photography Scholarship of Instituto Moreira Salles in 2018, the "Marcantonio Vilaça Award for the Arts" in 2019 and the PIPA Prize 2024. She recently participated in groundbreaking exhibitions such as "Feminist Histories: artists after 2000" - São Paulo Art Museum/MASP, "Afro-Atlantic Histories" - MASP / Tomie Ohtake, "When the world changes"- Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires, Argentina and "Rethink everything", Les Rencontres de la Photographie, Arles, France. Her solo exhibition "Aline Motta: memory, journey and water" opened at the Rio Art Museum/MAR in 2020. In 2021, her video work was exhibited at the New Museum (NY) as part of the "Screen Series" program. In 2022, she released her first fiction book "Water is a time machine" (a finalist for the Jabuti, Brazil's most prestigious literary award). Also, had solo shows at Sesc Belenzinho and MASP in São Paulo. In 2023, exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 15 (UAE), at MoMA Museum of Modern Art (NY) in “Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond" and the 35th São Paulo Biennial.