Eluiza Bortolotto Ghizzi, Professor in the Graduate Program of Language Studies at the
Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul (UFMS)
I started reading Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble - Feminism and the Subversion of Identity as
a recommendation of Mariana Arndt. The book presented a reflection about the negative
appreciation of problems, often responsible for expressions such as “do not create problems,
do not be a rebel...” that, with a lightening burden of conflicts and repressive of possible
insurgencies, populated the childhood of many of us. Butler affirms she later learned that
problems are inevitable in life, being up to us how to choose the best way of creating, of
having them. Though irreducible to any procedure, art, that in the realm of references and
meanings changeably extends and entrenches itself throughout history, does not abstain itself
from having an intimate dialog with the phenomena initially – and not rarely involuntarily –
given as problems. These phenomena affect us: affection, sometimes long-lasting,
instinctively emerges, pushing the comings and goings between art and life. To think over
such questions is imperative to understand the art of Mariana and many other artists unwilling
to accommodate themselves over beliefs disconnected to their experiences. The male
heteronormativity (to which our culture is subdued) includes the female as a subordinate and
tends to neglect the diversity of sexes and genders, thus involving many conflicts. A place
where these conflicts inevitably occur is certainly the body. It is upon the body that
impositions act, attempting to control one’s discourse, to repress the expression, the free, the
new – in sum, the elements that end up seeming confrontations. Paraphrasing Bárbara Kruger,
the body becomes a “battlefield.” Mariana’s art detects this phenomenon, is affected by it,
experiences it, opts for the body-resistance and assumes a critical stance. Mariana finds in the
performing arts the initial expression and allies herself with the artists she photographs,
dialoguing her art with theirs. Besides recording and revealing another of the photographer’s
mastery in the languages of art, photography powerfully mediates this process here! It joins
performance in conferring drama and concreteness to the expression of the body, which
imposes itself, talks to us, evokes our sight, feelings, ideas…