Painting with pronounced gestures and thick layers of paint, Márcia Falcão (1985) articulates relationships between the female body and pictorial matter, while drawing on motifs from the Rio de Janeiro suburbs, where she was born, lives, and works. Her palette, based on browns, reds, and other skin tones, seeks a fleshy representation of the body, while the aggression of her canvases falls primarily upon the female figures that inhabit them. Flesh is pierced, carved, lacerated, and burned in a reenactment of the systematic violence that threatens the lives of women, particularly Black and peripheral women, in Brazil. In some canvases, equally visceral scenes of ecstasy establish a polarity between pleasure and pain. The sensory excitement of Falcão’s painting derives as much from the urgency of her subject matter as from the artist’s experience of living in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

Her solo exhibitions include Monuments of Flesh, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, United States (2024); Pai Contra Mãe, Instituto Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro (2023); and Márcia Falcão, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo (2022). Among her group exhibitions are Corpo-casa: Diálogos entre Carolee Schneemann, Diego Bianchi e Márcia Falcão, Pivô, São Paulo (2024); The Big Picture, Night Gallery, Los Angeles, USA (2023); Funk! Um grito de ousadia e liberdade, Museu de Arte do Rio — MAR, Rio de Janeiro (2023); Engraved into the Body, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York, USA (2021); and Ainda fazemos as coisas em grupo, Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro (2020). The artist also participated in the 36ª Bienal de São Paulo, Nem todo viandante anda estradas: Da Humanidade como Prática (2025).