25 ( mariana tilly

Emoção/ Emotion
Mariana Tilly

Spirit Shop at Padaria do Povo
13.12.2025—24.01.2025

View of the exhibition Emoção/ Emotion, Padaria do Povo, Lisbon, 2025. Photos: Carbonara Studio.

The things we offer others — On the work of Mariana Tilly

"Is there a childhood sublime? Does it end where expectation begins? For the sublime is punctuated by egotism, by the rapt, hard, small beak of my self demanding to be me. My self finding the words for that. If I can find the words I can make it real, she thought and that was when she sat down to be a writer."
—Anne Carson, Wrong Norma

The books by Canadian writer Anne Carson have been a constant in my reading since 2020. The texts appear at specific moments, as if by premeditated chance. The first book I read by Carson, in 2020, was the play Norma Jeane Baker of Troy. In 2021, I read Autobiography of Red, in 2022 The Beauty of the Husband, and this year Wrong Norma. Carson is an author I had not been able to get close to, and whom I somehow avoided, without knowing why. The hermeticism of her writing confronted me with a process of self-knowledge that frightened me. She forces us to think about ourselves, our will, and what we desire.

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (2019) is a hybrid play, part poetry, part dramatic essay. The work intertwines two iconic female figures separated by millennia: Norma Jeane Baker, Marilyn Monroe’s birth name, and Helen of Troy, the drama written by Euripides and first performed in 412 BC for the Dionysia theatre festival. The play takes place in a kind of limbo between fiction and reality, where a narrator-scribe (who sometimes takes on different voices) draws parallels between Marilyn’s trajectory and the myth of Helen, showing how both were transformed into symbols onto which men project their fantasies, violence, and narratives. Carson points out that, in Euripides’ version, Helen was never in Troy; her figure was instrumentalized, and her image hijacked. This concept is used as a metaphor for Marilyn, whose public persona was also a cultural construct, a ghost separate from Norma Jeane. Carson shows how both women were reduced to symbols of desire and war, and how their voices were silenced by male narratives.

In 2020, I came across Mariana Tilly and her work, and from that encounter, conversations and ideas began to emerge. The intensity of our conversations — which often took place within a small group — suggested the need for action in life as well as in the field of visual arts. The conversations referred to and still refer to a presence that challenges the rules of the means used in artistic production in the late-capitalist context, which inevitably informs the context of current artistic production. We often discussed the role of the artist and how they became a romanticised figure — heightened during the 20th century, but dating back at least to the Renaissance — as someone who is alone and must mark their path with a gesture of singular creative grandeur.

The narrative of the artist as a proto-entrepreneur maliciously aids neoliberal narratives that view the artistic act as the ultimate moment of creation. Several areas of production have vampirised concepts linked
to art, from presentation spaces such as the ‘white cube’ to the museum as the ultimate space for legitimising what should or should not be done. And if, for a long time, we artists allowed ourselves to be enchanted by the supposed achievements of singularity, it now seems that all images, texts, and intellectual production serve to feed digital content platforms, which devour information only to regurgitate it, rehashed and increasingly vulgarised. It is typical of the neoliberal narrative to foment hate speech in a supposed internal war that should rather be a discussion of levels of privilege and access.

The title of this text is a phrase I wrote with this exhibition in mind, Mariana Tilly’s first solo exhibition, which I am presenting with Spirit Shop. It is an encounter with her visual work and research in its different approaches. Tilly has a constant practice of drawing, painting, and video, while at the same time she is interested in researching real and very specific events that dialogue with her visual practice. Writing is also part
of her work, broadening her field of action. What the artist has been doing is not limiting her artistic work to one format. Tilly is a painter by training, but her practice and research extend far beyond the format of canvas and paper, where she formulates her obsessions. There is a latent curiosity in her research that is the result of attention and an ethic that the artist consciously practises. Her work has a strong biographical component, despite being far removed from the common identity narratives we have seen in art in recent years.

The exercise I set myself in this text was to use some biographical references and real moments to reflect, drawing on the work and research of Mariana Tilly to better understand what is happening in the present based on an interpretation of the recent past. Although we believe in a meritocratic system, we know that it is increasingly difficult to put into practice. The context in which we grow up tends to profoundly shape who we are. As I said earlier, artistic practice tends to be seen within a narrative that feeds stereotypes of the artist as someone alone, when in fact the artist is also culturally produced by the place where they were born and raised, and by the places where they decide to operate. But in art, this gesture, which can be seen as highly selfish, is an offering to others.

Offering something to someone — or to a community — is a gesture that is both altruistic and selfish. Altruistic, because it stems from a genuine desire to contribute, alleviate, improve or simply bring joy to others. But it is also a selfish gesture, because each offering gives the giver a sense of purpose, belonging, validation and otherness. Thus, the act of giving becomes a meeting point between others, a gesture where we recognise our human need for meaning and connection. One possible way of seeing this is in the things we offer to others, but which we ourselves often do not have.

To understand the context in which artist Mariana Tilly developed, we must go back to a specific moment in the recent history of Lisbon and its surroundings: the dismantling of the 6 de Maio neighbourhood in Damaia, Amadora. The neighbourhood was close to where the artist lived for much of her childhood. Tilly recently painted a mural on the façade of the Centro Social 6 de Maio, which is the only structure that remains of the old neighbourhood. The dismantling of this space represents one of the most striking episodes in the recent history of housing in Portugal. More than the physical elimination of a group of informal buildings, the process brought to light historical tensions between urbanisation, immigration, inequality, public policies and human rights. The end of the neighbourhood was not only the end of a self-built space; it was also the end of a community that, despite its fragilities, had created deep bonds, shared identities and a way of life all its own.

6 de Maio emerged in the 1970s, during a period of rapid social transformation: the end of the colonial empire, the return of thousands of people, the arrival of immigrants from the former colonies, and the state’s inability to respond quickly to housing needs. Self-construction became the immediate solution for those who had no alternative. The narrow streets, makeshift houses, and poor infrastructure were not only the result of poverty, but also a reflection of inadequate public policies. Residents built with what they had, erecting houses, families, and routines. They created associations, shared traditions, and rebuilt cultures far from their countries of origin. The neighbourhood was precarious, yes, but it was also lively, social, and full of identity.

The Portuguese State officially recognised the existence of informal settlements with the Special Rehousing Programme (PER), created in 1993. The objective was clear: to eliminate “shacks” and rehouse families in social housing. For years, the promise of rehousing fuelled expectations. However, the slow pace, bureaucracy and criteria required created inequalities and exclusions within the neighbourhood itself. Families without complete documentation, new households or people who were not registered at the beginning of the programme were left out. Thus, a programme created to combat precariousness ended up leaving some peo- ple even more vulnerable. As the demolitions progressed, a deep conflict emerged: the city sought to ‘recover’ degraded spaces, while residents fought not to lose the only home they knew. The machines that knocked down walls also knocked down memories, ties and a history of resistance.
The demolitions were often accompanied by social tension, police presence and clashes. For many families, rehousing meant a material improvement, but also the fragmentation of the support networks that sustained their daily lives. Territoriality — that which makes a neighbourhood more than just a physical space — was lost in the change.

The 6 de Maio neighbourhood was stigmatised for decades. In public discourse, the neighbourhood was often reduced to a space of crime, poverty, and disorder. This narrative justified harsh interventions and urban policies that treated the territory as a ‘problem’ to be eliminated, rather than a community to be supported. This symbolic criminalisation had real consequences: it shaped perceptions, legitimised evictions and minimised the importance of listening to residents. A neighbourhood that was born out of the absence of the state ended up being destroyed by a belated and, in many moments, insensitive state presence.

At the same time, many residents claimed 6 de Maio as a place of belonging, culture — especially Cape Verdean culture — and solidarity. In the absence of public services, community networks were created. In the absence of space, makeshift houses were built. In the absence of recognition, a collective identity was consolidated. Today, the 6 de Maio neighbourhood no longer exists physically, but it remains in the memories of those who lived there and in the urban history of Amadora and the country. The end of the neighbourhood can be interpreted in two ways: as the end of a cycle of precariousness or as the elimination of a culture and a community that never found a place in formal urban planning. Rehousing brought better homes, but did not resolve all inequalities. Many of the causes that gave rise to the neighbourhood remain present: job insecurity, difficulties in social integration, economic exclusion and fragile documentation. At the same time, the loss of community networks makes it difficult for some of the former residents to build new paths for themselves.

The concept of self-construction is essential to understanding Mariana Tilly’s work. It is the active and communal part of the process of building our own space, our own body. The representations of the human body also refer to this discovery of the physical traits that we define for ourselves, as if, at a certain moment, we became aware — like a panic attack — of our own existence and the responsibility of being alive. In her work, she frequently uses references to popular culture and archival images from the recent past, of which she herself is a part. Her paintings and drawings, but also her installation and video works, reveal biographical aspects that intersect with images from cinema, as references to a more complex universe that the artist evokes.

The works shown in this exhibition explore the possibility of revealing the construction of an identity that cannot be defined by a discourse of patriarchal power. It is about reclaiming an agency that has been historically invisible, silenced or distorted in dominant narratives, and which attempts to reconstruct bodies and biographies from fragmented materials — texts, images, quotations — to challenge these absences and distortions. The images presented in Tilly’s work do not seek to portray a homogeneous or coherent body, but rather highlight the fragmented and constructed nature of identity: double faces, insinuated bodies, visual and textual juxtapositions that underline the ambivalence, multiplicity and contradiction inherent in human identity. Working with historical archives, literary texts, iconography, and cultural references — from law, science, art, and media — Tilly rewrites traditional historiography, inviting the viewer to question conventions about the body, gender, and normality. More than a tribute to an individual figure, the collection of works in Emoção/ Emotion aims to denounce how social and historical regimes silence bodies and identities, and how bureaucracy and the “invisible” power of the state shape behaviour and define actions. By reconstructing these narratives from fragments, Tilly proposes symbolic alternatives for other identities and bodies: multiple, mutable bodies, subject to reinterpretation, questioning the idea of a “natural” or “original” body.

The process of developing an artistic work depends on a decision we make within ourselves. We start by looking at what others have done and think we are capable of doing the same. It is not about competing with anyone, but about surpassing something or reaching a place we did not know before. It is something private and public, and therefore a challenge that involves many emotions, desires and wishes. Sharing with others what remains of this journey of research, exercises, and lived experience results in a demonstration of technical skills of concrete and random decisions. The work of artistic creation is as common as anything else. What we try to achieve is a feeling, a surprise. It is not religious rapture or political fury. It has to do with a form of independence, a desire to be unique, subjective, capable of making decisions that exist in a universe of their own.

PB, December 2025