Peripheral
eries
agazine
Special Edition
Contemporary Art
Peripheral ARTeries meets
Mónica Leitão Mota Lives and works in London, Ontario, Canada I am a visual artist working with textiles and mixed media in Canada. I studied Sculpture at the University of Fine Arts in Porto, Portugal, and later become an art teacher in several schools throughout the country. My work is continually inspired by my life’s journey, from my experiences as an art student, to moving to Canada, to everything that influences my acts and thoughts. In my work I use all kinds of recycled fabric, from cotton to wool, to small vintage pieces of linen or silk. I like to layer them with paper, tracing paper and organza, creating transparencies and depths and then connecting them all together with machine free motion stitching or hand stitching. I'm always taking photographic records of my creative process as my work often changes as it is being influenced by what I see and feel through the camera's lens.
An interview by Josh Ryders, curator and Melissa C. Hilborn, curator
Porto. How does this experience along with your past work as an art teacher influence the way you currently conceive your works? In particular, how did formal training help you to develop your unique style?
peripheral.arteries@europe.com
Experimenting with the powerful expressive potential of fibers, artist Mónica Leitão Mota's work rejects any conventional classification regarding its style, to address the viewers to a multilayered visual experience. In her body of works that we'll be discussing in the following pages, she successfully attempts to trigger the spectatorship's perceptual parameters, with a deeper focus on a complementary dialogue between materiality, content, and the encounter with the viewers. One of the most impressive aspects of Leitão Mota's work is the way it brings the notion of textile to a new level of significance, accomplishing the difficult task of addressing the viewers to a multilayered aesthetic visual experience: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her stimulating and multifaceted artistic production.
My years as a student of Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto were extremely stimulating both artistically and personally. It was during these years in which I learned several techniques of figurative drawing and representation, learned how to think critically, and, finally, developed and deepened my capacity for expression in the three dimensions. It was there thay I had my first contact with clay, iron and wood. Materials inherentely rich in texture and ready to be manipulated. My certainty of wanting to work in three dimensions was confirmed while attending Sculpture classes, spent inside huge studios full of light, filled with wooden structures ready to draw on the inspired work of students who frequented the course. The daily routines at the beginning and end of a day of classes in the studios instilled in me a longing for organized disorder and the need to always be surrounded by texture in my work environment.
Hello Mónica and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your multifaceted background. You have a solid background and you studied Sculpture at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of
SPECIAL ISSUE
It was during these years of study at the University that I began my career as a teacher of Visual Education and Geometry. My first year as a teacher was spent at a school in the interior of Portugal, where I had to drive
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