Artist Spotlight - Mary Di Iorio — Contemporary Art Curator Magazine

Biography

Mary Di Iorio is a Brazilian visual artist, professor, and researcher who divides her time between Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. She is currently developing her work "O Tempo dos Piões" (The Time of Spinning Tops) alongside a research archive for "Study and Bibliographic Systematization on Ceramics in Brazil," a project that led to the publication of her first book.

Di Iorio began her career with a solo exhibition at the Salão Jovem of Minas Tênis Clube in Belo Horizonte. She has since held solo exhibitions in major Brazilian museums and taken part in group exhibitions in Brazil and abroad, with her work featured in books, newspapers, specialized magazines, catalogs, and video publications nationally and internationally.

Her recent series, Cathedra, reconfigures the rigid, purposeful structure of an ordinary chair, connecting it to ceramic forms and spinning tops. Working at the intersection of ceramics, animation, and projection mapping, Di Iorio moves physical space into the digital register and back again, layering music, ambient noise, and visual effects so the virtual and the tangible overlap, trading form for counterform, light for shadow, figure for ground.

The result is less an object to view than an environment to enter: the projection claims the physical space around it, drawing viewers into a direct, embodied encounter with ceramics.

In the months leading into summer, Cathedra travelled internationally in partnership with Artboxy, shown at venues including Nicoleta Gallery (Berlin), Thomson Gallery (Zug, Switzerland), Andakulova Gallery (Dubai), and spaces in Milan, among others.

In April, the series took a different kind of flight: as part of Contemporary Art Station's Onboart exhibition, Cathedra was installed aboard a Vueling aircraft, circulating across European skies for 30 days.

In July, the work grounded itself with an independent solo presentation at Palazzo Pisani Revedin in Venice, Italy, timed to the Venice Biennale (July 14–20). This September, Cathedra travels to Seoul, South Korea, in partnership with Musa International Art Space.

Artist Statement

Cathedra began as a question about an object we stop noticing — the chair. I wanted to break its rigid, functional form and rebuild it through ceramics and spinning tops, then let animation carry it between the physical and the digital.

When the piece is installed, sound and video mapping take over the room: music, noise, and light turn it into something the audience doesn't just look at, but stands inside of.