Descripción del Artista
Érica Zíngano is an Italian-Brazilian poet, although her Italian heritage is more of a legal attachment than a realized identity. "It allows me to live in Europe, without facing so much bureaucratic problems. For an immigrant, it's a REAL privilege." Born in 1980 in Brazil and raised in the northeastern city Fortaleza, very early she discovered a clear desire for movement, probably during her childhood travels to the south of Brazil to join her father's family in Porto Alegre, at least 5.000 km from her hometown. Very early she understood that her inherited identity traits – heavy luggages one has to carry without asking why – could never be reduced, in her case, to the fiction of one single place.
So, then, when she was more sure about her own movements and desires, driven by the idea to keep studying and working – always a good excuse to keep a safe distance from the family and, of course, to be up to something else –, she decided to move to other cities and countries, trying to see from other points of view, by far and through different perspectives, the strong dichotomy between the north and the south of Brazil she carries in her body, in a way to connect to that very tensioned line new and unexpected landscapes.
Studies
She passed through the southeast of Brazil, in São Paulo, where she remained for four years and received a Master's in Portuguese Literature at the "Universidade de São Paulo", and after she moved to Europe, first to Portugal, where she began a Ph.D in Literary Studies – Portuguese Studies at the "Universidade Nova de Lisboa". Since her Master's, in São Paulo, she was already deeply involved with the literary work of the Portuguese writer Maria Gabriela Llansol (1931–2008) and during her Ph.D she often commuted from Lisbon to Sintra, where the Llansol's archive, the Espaço Llansol, used to be located. There, Érica was also researching unpublished documents, looking for other approaches between the literary work of Llansol and her odd poetic translations from French, especially the one of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.
But after three years of hard studying, and facing a deep existencial crisis, mainly triggered by the political protests that happened in Brazil in 2013, Érica decided to give up her Ph.D and move to Berlin, where she has been living her double labour life since 2014, working as an artist and a Portuguese language teacher.
Formación. 01 oct de 2024 - 04 abr de 2025 / PHotoEspaña / Madrid, España