Rita GT

Rita GT uses several media in her work (performance, installation, photography) and supports (video, light boxes, silk-screens, neon lights, objects) depending on the proposal. The work of this artist could be likened to a chameleon that blends with the color of its surroundings. It is based in the continuous dialogue with the artistic context, e.g. the appropriation of certain actions and manners (Tracey Emin) or the use of materials that bear the author’s signature (Bruce Nauman and Felix Gonzalez-Torres). This negotiation extends in time with no genealogic, typological or retrospective prejudice, and the artist enters an experimental, free exercise that covers different periods and contents. Her research can be resumed to two main classes and equating concepts: self-portrait and still nature. These are announced as continuously updated fields of representation that become fields of action. The presence of the body of the artist in the work, in the form of a character (performance) or an object (photography), conveys the politics in her work; the critical discourse is produced in the first person and worded as a direct discourse. The installation Tropicalismos Lusos e Outras Naturezas Mortas is an example of this commitment and of the balance between the imperative theory and an efficient aesthetics, presenting a series of assemblages composed by several elements: tropical fruits and flowers, religious symbols and fragments of the face of the artist. Rita GT is transformed into Carmen Miranda – the Portuguese-Brazilian who came back from a trip to the United States singing I’ve come back Americanized... – a device used to approach issues such as post-colonialism, alterity, the hybrid and the diverse, punctuated by an irreverent humor.