Born Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1961. Lives and works in Sáo Paulo, Brazil

Selected Solo Exhibitions: 2003 'Marcelo do Campo 1969-1975', Centro Cultural Maria Antonia, Sao Paulo 2002 Galeria Luisa Strina, Sáo Paulo 2001 'Quand les attitudes d'eforment les altitudes', Forum d'Art Contemporain, Sierre, Switzerland 2000 Crown Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; Noname Gallery, Rotterdam, Holland 1998 CitŽ Internationale des Arts, Paris, France 1996 Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Selected Group Exhibitions: 2003 'Compressores e Condensadores', Museum of Modern Art of Sáo Paulo, Espao Villa Lobos, Sao Paulo; 'Media Arts Prize', Centro Cultural Sergio Motta, Museum of Contemporary Art of Goias, Goiania; 'Skin, Soul', Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Sáo Paulo 2002 'My Friends', Museum of Modern Art of Sáo Paulo, Espao Villa Lobos, Sáo Paulo; 'Territ—rios', Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Sáo Paulo 2001 'Die Photografhische Sammlung', Galerie 68 Elf, Kšln, Germany; 'Sulsouth- Voyages into Mutant Technologies', Cam'es Institute of Portuguese Cultural Centre, Maputo, Mozambique; 'Photography Ð no Ð Photography', Museum of Modern Art of Sáo Paulo 2000 'Taller Internacional de Artistas', LA LLAMA, Foundation CELARG, Caracas, Venezuela 1999 'Open Ateliers', Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, Holland

Dora Longo Bahia

Phantoms and Fantasies

Wakeful and disquieting, Dora Longo Bahia's recent work continues a lineage of art dealing with the body and violenceÑmore specifically, the body as a stage for violence. In her works from the Who's afraid of red? and Untitled series of 2000-2002, Longo Bahia rather gracefully manipulates the mediums of painting and photography in the creation of ghostly images of what the artist defines as 'a future memory [rather] than a past memory.' Lured in by luscious layers of color and mysterious flickering light, one discovers complexly painted snapshots that, at once, question the present status of painting and photography in visual culture, while hovering eerily in the boundaries between the real and unreal, between illusion and hallucination.

Melancholy and atmospheric, Longo Bahia's paintings often linger on life and death, pain and memory, without however, verging on sentimentality. She begins with images of generations of family, from the young to the oldÑposed for portraits, in domestic settings, and on vacationsÑunguarded snapshots that almost always suggest a pregnant moment where most anything can go awry. Reminiscent of Arnulf Rainer's violently-colored crayon marks over grimaced self-portraits, the projected photos deep within Longo Bahia's Caracas paintings, like Matthew, Federico, Carola, MaryleeÉ, 2000, are repeatedly layered, veiled, and scratched. Through the scarred top layers of acrylic paint, exposed by the artist's scratching and marking, residual surfaces suggest a residual presence. 'In a photograph, there is already the absence of a body, a feeling that the body is missing; in the painting originated from a photo therefore, there is a feeling of missing the feeling of the missing bodyÉ' Like Carolee Schneemann's 1964 performance Meat Joy, in its celebration of food and flesh in wet red paint, the marks, scratches, and splatters that Longo Bahia inflicts on her sitters, are the performative embodied in figurative painting. Likewise, in her red-tinted photographs, all Untitled, from 2000, it is through Longo Bahia's grave yet ironic handling of history, memory, and fantasy, coupled with her manipulation of the chosen photographs, that her subjects are set to perform like actors in an extreme scene or situation, either comic or tragic. About these works, she says: 'É fantasies are phantoms as wellÉ' As a result, her recent photographs too enliven illusory spirits which enact a kind of dangerous beautyÑone that can equally endear and repel the unexpectant viewer.

Brooke Minto