I did maths before I decided to study art. So, I was quite a mature student when I finished my Fine Art B.A. in 1992 at the University of Brasília. In the meantime I had some group exhibitions and started working with scenery and costume design. In 1994, I moved to England and the following year I started an M.A in Fine Art at Brighton University. This I finished in 1997. My master's thesis was an investigation of the universe of kitsch, taste and mass culture.

During the period I lived in England I participated in many exhibitions, the most important being the newContemporaries 98, where I was selected by Phylida Barlow, Eddie Berg, Christine Honenbuchler and Adrian Searle to exhibit at the Tea Factory in Liverpool, the Camden Art Centre in London, and at Newcastle's University Gallery. The same year I participated in a group show, Jheglejland, at the Decima Gallery in London, and in 1999, I was selected by Lawrence Preece to be the Artist of the Day, at Flowers East.

Back in Brazil, I had my first solo show in 2000: a Coisa Plástica (the plastic thing). In 2002 I was selected to be part of the exhibition Novas Referencias (new references) which was intended to introduce a new generation of Brasilia's artists. In 2003 I did my first installation: Spotland, where I showed mainly paintings. In 2005 I did A arte supranatural dos Jardins (The supranatural art of gardens), where I showed 15 self-portraits taken in gardens around Brasília. At this show I also directed a performance for the opening, and I organised a series of talks on 'art and nature' by local artists and philosophers.

In the last two years I have continued working with installations. I did a solo and a group show, both using candy-floss as the main material; and I participated in an open-air art intervention at Funarte, an important Cultural Centre in Brasília.

From 2000, I have also been working on scenery and costume design. In O Mar (The Sea,2004), a contemporary dance show inspired by Debussy's La Mer, I received a grant as script co-writer and as artistic director, in addition to designing the costumes and scenery. Recently, I have been interested in video-dance, mainly through my involvement with contemporary dance and the performances that I have been directing at my installations.

Since the end of 1999 I have been working at the Museum of Money and the Art Gallery of the Brazilian Central Bank, as an exhibition designer. In 2004 I received a grant to write a book of interviews with Maciej Babinski, a well established Brazilian artist and retired lecturer at the art department of the University of Brasília. The book was launched in November 2006 in Brasília and Sao Paulo.

My work

1- My work dialogues with art history, and more specifically the history of painting. I am interested in many aspects of the academic traditions of the nineteenth century and modern / 20th century painting - in particular, issues involving perspective vs. two-dimensionality and figurative vs. abstract painting, plus the aesthetic and conceptual ideas presented in the different styles and movements of those periods.

2- Defiance of the traditional distinction between art and decoration, and an attempt to stimulate sensual involvement, are constant elements in my work.

4- The history of my work is also a history of exploration of materials. In 1997, when researching for my masters, I replaced canvas by glossy PVC in my paintings, to stress the non-natural character of art. Following this, day-glo colours, ornamental layouts, golden / silver elements, and cartoon-like shapes started to call my interest; as did plastic items like children's toys, which I started adding to the painting's surface. From 2001, my painting began to evolve into three-dimensional objects. The acrylic boxes that I started using to protect my work created an illusion of perspective and they reaffirmed to me, more and more, the idea of painting as an object. Vinyl cuttings are the latest material to be regularly incorporated into my work.

In 2003, partly as an extension of my work setting up exhibitions in the museum and partly inspired by my experience with scenery; I decided to address the gallery space rather than just the walls. Since then, I have been working with installations where painting is my main reference.

5- Bringing the world of industrialized objects, especially mass-produced pseudo-art, and the world of art together is an important goal for me as well; turning the world of objects into subjectivity.

6- My experience working in a museum has stimulated me to explore a fusion of concepts and practices from both museums and galleries. I want to understand and reproduce the virtues of both institutions: the museum teaches the artist to be more aware of issues relating to spatiality, the communication between the work of art and the viewer, and the harmonization of relations between men and objects; while art teaches the museum curator to invite imagination to be part of her project.