The first thing I look at in a painting is the edges. Are they left white and neat, or does the work continue to the perimeter of the canvas? It's more of a habit to check than a judgment thing, but it can be quite telling. Entering Belin's CFA, I spot two monumental works in the room to my left, but turn right instead to the nearest work and B-line to its side. In the case of Márcia Falcão, her canvases show a few drinnling, passionate flicks of paint on their edges, continuing past their faces. Confined to the surface of their unframed canvas, Falcão's figrues dance and bloom into existence – but not wihtout restraint.
Falcão, a Black Brazilian women, paints Black Brazilian bodies – often her own. Born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, she paints (and scrapes and scratches) her lives experience, usign paint as a translator between her body and environment. Racial- and gender-based violence enters her works because it is a present force, but so it motherhood, and a complex relationship between a Carioca and her home. With over twenty years under her belt as an artist, her current solo show and European debut, Corpo de Cor, is an accumulation of knowledge and research from the past two decades. With five series, and just under thirty works on show, Falcão's pieces are tender, frustrated, empowered, and graphic.
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