Mariana Marra Diana

San José, Uruguay, April 20, 1970.

I studied at the Faculty of Architecture and the National School of Fine Arts, two spaces that sparked my interest in the dialogue between form, color, and thought.

For several years I worked as a graphic designer, a profession that allowed me to explore visual language from the everyday, the concrete, and the symbolic.

I trained in art with Javier Lage, Matías Elizalde, Horacio Carliz, and Gerardo Acuña.

I took two years of Contemporary Art at FAC with Fernando López Lage, an experience that awakened and deepened my contemporary thinking, opening new ways of seeing and creating meaning through painting.

I studied Art History for several years with Professor Sandra Massera, a process that profoundly transformed the way I understand art.

I also attended philosophy workshops oriented toward art with Inés Moreno and Andrea Carriquiry, where I learned that painting can be thought and color can be a way of questioning.

At the San José Museum, I conducted a course/workshop on artistic experimentation focused on color interaction, a theme that runs through all my work as a relentless pursuit.

My work is primarily developed in oil painting and mixed media on canvas, board, or cardboard. I seek in each piece a balance between the sensitive and the symbolic, between the body and the landscape, between what is seen and what is intuited.

My practice is based on color observation and constant reflection with contemporary thought, as a way of inhabiting the world through painting.

I have participated in various group exhibitions, including the III Colonia Art Biennial, where I received an honorable mention for the work Alhambra dream, and the exhibition “100 Years of the Uruguayan Medical Union,” in which I received an honorable mention for the work Doctor.

Among my solo exhibitions, highlights include A Study of the Anthropocene, a reflection on the traces of our civilization and the marks left by humanity’s desire to dominate its environment; and Bistro Nights, created to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bar Tabaré, a poetic look at urban life, shared memory, and encounters in café spaces.