Pio XII, MA, Brazil, 1982
Lives and works in Marabá, PA, Brazil
Marcone Moreira’s work incorporates various languages, such as paintings, sculptures, videos, objects, photographs, and installations. His research is associated with the memory of worn-out materials, impregnated with culturally constructed meanings. In his artistic practice, he develops a methodology that involves appropriation, displacement, and symbolic exchange of materials.
Recent solo exhibitions include: “Fraturas,” with a critical text by Eucanaã Ferraz, Portas Vilaseca Galeria, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil (2024); “Exaustos,” Casa das Onze Janelas, Belém, PA, Brazil (2018); “Linhas de Força,” Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil (2017); “Marcone Moreira,” Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil (2016); “Território líquido,” Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, SP, Brazil (2015).
Recent group exhibitions include: “Tanto Mar,” Espaço Santa Catarina, Lisbon, Portugal (2020); “VAIVÉM,” curated by Raphael Fonseca, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil São Paulo, Brasília, Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte (2019); “From the Margin to the Edge,” Somerset House, London, UK (2012).
Marcone Moreira has received several awards and grants throughout his career. Notable ones include the PREAMAR of Art and Culture – Production and Circulation, from Secult-PA, in 2020; the Research and Artistic Experimentation Grant, awarded by Casa das Artes in Belém, in 2018; and the Visual Arts Production Stimulus Grant from Funarte, in 2013. In 2014, he was awarded the Artistic Residency Program from Fundação Joaquim Nabuco in Recife, and in 2009, he received the Research and Artistic Experimentation Grant from the Institute of Arts of Pará, also in Belém.
Moreira won the Marcantonio Vilaça Prize, from CNI/Sesi, in 2011, and again the Marcantonio Vilaça/Funarte Prize in 2010. In 2008, he won the award at the XV Salão da Bahia, in Salvador, and the following year, he received the Projéteis de Arte Contemporânea Prize from Funarte, in Rio de Janeiro. He was also part of the Exhibition Program at the Centro Cultural São Paulo in 2007 and received the Pampulha Grant from the Museu de Arte da Pampulha in 2005. Among his earlier achievements, he won the Grand Prize at the XXII Salão Arte Pará in 2003.
The artist’s works are present in several renowned institutional collections, including: Museu de Arte do Rio – MAR, Rio de Janeiro, RJ; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro – MAM; Museu da Universidade Federal do Pará, Belém, PA; Casa das Onze Janelas, Belém, PA; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia – MAM, Salvador, BA; Fundação Clóvis Salgado, Belo Horizonte, MG; Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP.
The landscape marks everything in Marcone Moreira’s work. Living where he does – in Marabá, a city in the southeast of the state of Pará, at the confluence of two major rivers, the Tocantins and Itacaiúnas – is his most valuable asset. His eyes are there. It is the reality of the place that defines the essential lines of his work – paintings, installations, sculptures, photographs, things. The local vocabulary gains presence in his work, however, through a formal sensibility rooted in the fundamental processes of modern and contemporary art. The most striking example: Marcone appropriates the popular visual aesthetic in readymades originating from boats, trucks, crates, Styrofoam boxes, and other objects. Nevertheless – or perhaps for this very reason – the landscape appears only as a metonymy: a piece, a remnant. Or even a fracture, understood as a fragmentary but not shapeless form.
