Marta Mestre, Rio de Janeiro
Her love of the arts took her on a one-way trip to Rio de Janeiro, where she works in the Museu de Arte Moderna and soaks up every inch of the city’s natural beauty.
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“I’m from the Alentejo, I was born in Beja and I grew up in the Municipal Library which my father managed, and whose books became my world. When I was a teenager, I read a book made me want to be an anthropologist, then I wanted to do archaeology, before finally deciding to follow the arts, after discovering modern and Impressionist painters. The library was the centre of the universe and a way of accessing the unknown.” Marta has all the subtlety of an artist, with an open smile and intelligent gaze. Highly observant, she soon followed her heart and chose Art History and Museology, which she studied in Lisbon, before taking a Master’s in the same area in Paris. She’s currently the assistant curator at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro (MAM) and works on the museum’s exhibition programme, in addition to organising educational activities for the general public. She lives in one of the cities of the future while closely monitoring the oeuvre of today’s artists, reflecting and exhibiting it to the public. Whenever she can, she visits studios in Rio and São Paulo to write about exhibitions that touch her in some way.
Marta went to Rio de Janeiro to organise an exhibition and a seminar at MAM about the South Atlantic and its contemporary cultural exchanges in the fields of art, design, curation, creative economy, anthropology and literature. “I ended up receiving an invitation from the curator of the MAM to join their team,” she recalls.
Now, for example, she’s involved in the project coordinating MAM with other partner institutions in Rio and Brazil, in order to create a top programme for contemporary art events from the 2014 and 2016 world events (the Olympics and World Cup), which will take place in the city. “We would like to provide continuity to the exhibitions that we have had with Portuguese artists, museums and collections and we will hold the second edition of the programme about the South Atlantic Terceira Metade at MAM.”
Nice dream
She had imagined Rio de Janeiro many times, long before she landed at Tom Jobim airport. “For us Portuguese, there’s a certain Rio de Janeiro that extends the cultural experience of language, city, architecture, warmth, music,” she says. When she first arrived, she already had Brazilian friends, artists and art critics, making her feel at home right away. “I’m not the type to have problems adapting.” She was also lucky to have a couple of artist friends: “They lent me their studio, where I stayed for the first couple of months, in the heart of Santa Teresa, surrounded by romantic houses and trams. It was from there I got to know the city, which is very different depending on which neighbourhoods and areas you’re in.
Then, I moved to Leblon, two blocks from Calçadão and the beach, on the south side of the city. Now, I live in Largo do Machado, near the centre, where there’s more of a buzz, more movement, and where the different social classes mix.” “What makes Rio a unique city,” she adds,” is its contradictory beauty, which explodes. On the corner of a street, lined with tall buildings, suddenly, a hill covered with vegetation rises up.”
Rio de Janeiro makes Marta happy. Particularly because of the “lush nature within the city, its optimism, the cold beer, the antique bookshops, cod fritters, music on street corners, the time left over.” And the people? “They don’t whinge and whine. I like them for that.”
When we talk to her about Portuguese nostalgia, she doesn’t bat an eyelid: “I’ve lived in Rio de Janeiro for a year and a half and I hope to stay for many more. I miss my country in the details, the little everyday things, the friends and family who are still there, but I’ve always dealt with it well because I find my country in some of the most unexpected places. My place is here now. “
by Patrícia Barnabé
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