about
Mariana Souza (b. 1997) is a Brazilian artist currently based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is pursuing her BFA degree in Photography and Media art at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
Her work explores the human ability of adaptation and transformation, always considering anxieties and limitations of the flesh. She uses the sense of home to create narratives on navigating through different cultures, allowing herself to embrace contradictions of her own identity. Balancing the struggles to keep memories of her home country alive and molding herself to fit a new culture, the artist uses her own experiences to explore racism, rejection, decolonization, and memory. Belonging to different minorities—a female from South America—Mariana highlights feelings of inferiority and the importance of deconstruction in Western societies in order to open territories restricted to "outsiders."
