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Eli Heil was an adult when she became very ill and was bedridden for 8 years. One day her brother arrived with a picture. She had a look and said, “I can do that, and better!” And from that day on, she never stopped. Eli “vomited” art like a pregnant woman and gave birth through all the artistic media she could find. She is still in the middle of this intense gestation. “I started without realising, giving birth to each piece, and letting go of the first was very hard.” Eli is an artist that works with popular and erudite themes, in the broadest and deepest sense of these words. Her roots are clear in all of her work, and she reveals a world of her own, that also points to the cruelty of what’s around her. A fighter, she argues, shouts and confronts powerful forces. When she felt threatened, Eli searched for a place where she could live and show her pieces. People came and destroyed her monumental Adam and Eve, but she didn’t give up. As they had fallen, she buried them in an open air cemetery of sculptures in front of her house. “I’m an artist with a pregnant mind. Art for me is a way of expelling beings.” Eli has no limits. She relentlessly uses clay, wood, scraps, thread, paint, resin until she’s exhausted, which she never seems to be. Eli’s work is born to be felt, not to be understood. Her sculptures are beings with faces, mouths, horns, tails, bodies, organs and are too human. She’s been hurt by humans, but can’t get rid of them so easily. They haunt her, day and night. Eli was born in Palhoça (SC), in 1929. Her Mundo Ovo (Egg World) of Eli Heil, in Florianópolis (SC), is an enchanted place. |
| Eli Heil |
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