If Looks Could Kill...

Emptiness and loss haunt the works of Mara Castilho. Like spectres at a ball, they drift into and out of the frame, into and out of focus.
Castilho's work addresses the void no less than Yves Klein, and in no less a dapper fashion. The ghosts in Castilho's works have already met Madam Guillotine, and were as fashionably dressed as Klein. For now they cry, they rage against the darkness and their pain strikes the viewer straight between the eyes.
Yet they cannot have this longed for fleshiness, as they inhabit the world of images, of movies, of videos, of projections, of light caught on photographic paper. They can never be real. They are bound, caught in the medium that brings them into existence and traps them in the space of the eye, in the being seen, they flee from view, they run past, they strain the eye. How cruel she is. What makes her all the more cruel is how perfectly she stitches her fictions into the frames. The films themselves are full of light and dark areas, rich monochromes jump out from the dark, with soundtracks that accentuate the action, that add another layer of pathos until the installations almost explode. But they don't, there is no release. The works do not free the spectres nor spare the spectators, they are harsh, they are beautiful, they do speak of death, and we have to be strong enough to watch.         Michael Petry

‘Ausencia II’ (Video-Installation)
‘...‘Ausencia II’ (Absence) has the power, simplicity and beauty that bring artists such as Bill Viola to mind, drawing on themes of loneliness, femininity, suffering, loss and the complexity and duality of the human condition…’ New York Arts magazine (NY/USA)

Prague Triennal 2008
"...Mara Castilho stands out with her videos set in installations — one of a woman seeming to go insane in a decrepit shower stall (Process 5703-2000), and Walking Through Rubble (2008), which projects images of destruction and includes a sculpture of a female mannequin dressed up in burned photos of escalators and passages..." Prague Post 2008