The body is both the creator and subject of Juliana Cerqueira-Leite’s work. This Brazilian-American artist begins each sculpture or canvas by literally throwing herself into it – burrowing through huge blocks of clay, pouring plaster repeatedly over her body, and manipulating her paint-covered body over canvas panels. This very physical process leaves traces of the motion, dimensions, physical limitations and extremities of her body, and from these beginnings she makes her drawings, and her sculptures with metal, latex, wood and plaster.

Juliana Cerqueira-Leite (1981) is from São Paulo, Brazil, and lives in New York. She completed her studies at London’s Slade School of Fine Art and at the Camberwell College of Art. She has since exhibited her work internationally, most recently with shows in Lithuania, California and London, and was included in the Newspeak exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery 2010. Juliana is recipient of the 2006 Kenneth Armitage Sculpture Prize and the 2010-11 A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship. She has curated a number of exhibitions, including Physical Centre, a two month project of performance, film and lectures at Guest Projects, London in 2011.

Nel lavoro di Juliana Cerqueira Leite il corpo è sia autore che soggetto dell’opera. L’artista brasiliana-americana comincia ogni scultura o dipinto gettandosi sulla materia: scavando enormi blocchi di argilla, versando ripetutamente il gesso sul suo corpo o imprimendolo, ricoperto di pittura, sui pannelli di tela. Tale processo, così fisico, lascia tracce del movimento, delle dimensioni, delle limitazioni e delle estremità del corpo e, da tutto ciò, Juliana realizza i disegni e le sculture in metallo, lattice, legno o gesso.