Karine Mageste: Entre Memória e Ficção Científica Copiar

Painting as a Diary of Transformation

Por: @mashup.br

Karine Mageste transforms painting into narrative, exploring the past, present, and future as parts of the same line. Her work carries the nuances of memory, identity, and science fiction, creating visual diaries that unfold like layers of a personal and artistic process. Her gender transition played a key role in her journey, making her art a space for investigating transformation and self-perception. We spoke with the artist about her inspirations, processes, and how her research manifests in each canvas.

Source: Karine Mageste

Karine explores the temporal intersections in her works, creating a narrative that blends memories, emotions, and projections. For her, at least for now, painting is an emotional and reflective diary, a way to organize daily thoughts and transform them into symbolic images.

MashUp: What attracts you to this intersection between past, present, and future?

Karine Mageste: I see life unfolding along this timeline; it feels like we're constantly accessing things from the past, memories, and thoughts of the future, and all of this influences the present. And then, in the midst of these thoughts, come very strong thoughts, and I think, “Wow, I need to record this.” How can I construct an image from this? [...] This parallel between the present, future, and past is very much connected in the formation of our being, in this being we choose to be each day. We wake up today with a mood, today I will be this being. And then you access memories from the past and think about projections for the future.

This continuous flow of time and memory is reflected in how Karine builds her compositions, mixing nostalgic elements with inspirations from science fiction, a genre that has fascinated her since childhood. "Science fiction is a cinematic medium that I love a lot... it's very present in my work because it deals with this question of the future, the present, and the past."

Self-representation has become an essential part of her work. Inspired by her personal experiences and cultural references, Karine places herself as the protagonist of her canvases, questioning stereotypes and exploring her ever-changing identity.

MashUp: How was the process of expressing yourself through art during your gender transition?

Karine: My transition made my work transition into a kind of diary, and that's when I started using form, color, and composition in painting to establish stories, stories from different periods. I had already started to develop a mastery of color and form, and I was able to expand it into something more, you know? I started working with the background not just as something to support the figure but as something that would also interact with the figure. I’ve always worked a lot with figures. I began treating the background and the figure in an equal pictorial way, you know? With the same responsibility.

Previously, her figures were flat, separated from the background. Today, background and figure interact organically, reflecting the complexity of her personal journey.

The Melancolias series explores a nostalgic setting with influences from science fiction. Inspired by films like Alien, Karine creates compositions that blend melancholy and fantasy, reflecting her memories and emotions.

MashUp: You depict aliens in some of your works. Why?

Karine: When I watched Alien as a child, I saw Ripley, and she was a woman with lieutenant-like attitudes... She expects the protocol to be followed, and she has this attitude that, in some cases, is authoritative, which is completely normal for a man in a 1979 movie. So, when I was a kid and saw this movie, one of the first things that caught my attention was the protagonist and the story itself. There's this creature from space, and the only mechanism it has is to survive and propagate its species. So, the way the creature develops and multiplies is almost like rape, you know? And the film is full of allegories, and I started analyzing that. When I painted this, I was dating a guy, and it was one of the first experiences I was having post-transition. I found everything very confusing; I wasn’t understanding anything. I was really feeling lost in the corridor of a spaceship, running from a creature.

The alien, then, becomes a metaphor for her personal experiences. This exploration goes beyond the theme of science fiction, revealing a symbolic play between the real and the imaginary, where past and future converge in the same narrative plane.

Source: Karine Mageste

Despite the futuristic aesthetic of some of her works, Karine also explores her cultural roots in the Morada dos Afetos series. With a nostalgic and emotional approach, the series celebrates family memories and emotional connections. "The Morada dos Afetos is divided into four parts: the first being a series of clouds, the second nebulas, and then it unfolds with my mother, me, and my dog..."

This thematic plurality reflects Karine's versatility in navigating between science fiction, nostalgia, and family affections, creating an emotional narrative. Always seeking to express herself, she also explores other formats beyond collage and painting. Currently, she is investigating the possibility of incorporating hinges into canvases, inspired by the aesthetics of pop-up books.

MashUp: What led you to explore hinges on canvases?

Karine: I've always investigated pop-up a lot, and I’ve always really liked making pop-ups. The pop-up has this thing with paper, right? The ease of paper, the paper folds, glues. I’ve always done a lot of that in watercolor. But then, I really wanted to do that in oil as well. To investigate this possibility of something that folds, I put hinges on the canvases.

Art is not just a form of expression but a way of existing in the world. Her paintings are records of her personal journey, reflections on time, identity, and transformation. In her works, past, present, and future meet, creating a space for reflection and emotional connection. Her art is a constant investigation into what it means to exist and transform, exploring identities, affections, and memories with delicacy and depth.

Por Rafaela Fornitani 8 de janeiro de 2025

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