Carlotta Mateus De Hildenbrand

‘Make pretty colours and make it agreeable, and in that way make people look.’ Paula Rego, a famous Portuguese artist, once said this regarding what art needs in order to garner attention for the issues it speaks about. Art essentially necessitates a level of aestheticization of its subject to deal with certain matters. My practice is heavily rooted in reframing anatomy and issues of consent and reproduction through this aestheticisation of art to heighten public awareness of feminist issues. I research sexual health concerns through books, online resources, and current cases that inform my practice. I work primarily in serialised sculptural mediums that are or look like jewellery, much like my father once had, intending to offer art to audiences in a more accessible manner.

My practice revolves around using art as a medium for sexual education through a feminist scope fuelled by my life experiences. I remember the strange shame that filled me when boys in school would joke about how ugly our bodies were, that some of us looked ‘loose’ and ‘used up.’ Did I? Why did I look like this? Why couldn’t I look normal? Issues like these remind me that the problems women face and our bodies were not only being viewed through a misogynistic lens but often misunderstood by those who lashed out and even those who received these lashings.

Alongside my personal experiences, the growing issues of women’s rights in the world (such as the overturning of Roe V Wade in 2022) have shaped my artistic research into four interconnected pathways: the relationship between art and reproductive rights, the aestheticization of subjects, the perfection of the materiality I work with, and curatorial concerns. These lines of questioning and testing aim to reach as many people as possible with my work, reframing feminist concerns for everyone to engage with.