Biography

Visual artist, researcher, and professor with a specialization in the History of Art and Architecture in Brazil. Her career began with a solo exhibition at the Salão Jovem of Minas Tênis Clube in Belo Horizonte, and since then, her works have traveled the world, featured in both solo and group exhibitions.

In 2025, Mary participated in major international exhibitions, including ArtExpo New York (April 2025), ARTEOM Gallery (May 2025), and ARTBASEL WEEK ARTBOXY LIVE in Basel (June 2025). Her works were also showcased in galleries such as Nicoleta (Berlin, February and March), Andakulova (Dubai, February and March), and Thomsom (Zurich, February and March).

Throughout her career, Mary Di Iorio has held solo exhibitions at prestigious Brazilian museums, including:
National Museum of Fine Arts (Rio de Janeiro, 2001)
MASP – São Paulo Museum of Art (1991)
Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (1991)
Museum of Modern Art of Belo Horizonte (1992)
Museu do Açude (Rio de Janeiro, 1996)
Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (1982)
Museum of Art of Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre, 1982)

With a solid academic background and teaching experience, Mary co-founded the Faculty of Arts at the Federal University of Uberlândia (MG) in 1972, where she served as professor and department head. In 1978, she furthered her studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti "Pietro Vannucci" in Italy, documenting her experience as a ceramics instructor. She lectures in Brazil and abroad and has been widely published in books, catalogs, magazines, and newspapers, both nationally and internationally.

She is the author of the following books:
Ceramic Art in Education (UFU-MG Press; 1st edition 1981, 2nd edition 1984)
MARY DI IORIO (Preface by Pietro Maria Bardi, UFU Press, 1991)
Ceramics in Brazil: Bibliographic Systematization (UFMG Press, 2014)

Artist Statement

Work in process with the accelerated growth of technology and its issues causing so much concern, we have had to use alternatives in our living and working. So, as the internet was already in my work process, it gave me more courage to make a greater change and transgression when making ceramics.

Now, I want to animate it, transgress it, give it movement, physical, apparent movement. I want to guarantee its visibility so that it can be displayed online in a new experience, without prediction. This makes me even more excited. Because the biggest motivation is to break the result of burning the clay when it makes the ceramic inflexible, and to move it in a playful way, thinking: creation and audacity, intersections, contacts and friction throughout the creation process and, to nullify the first function of the forms, creating other forms and either/other form with a time for them.

A construction process between ceramics and other media, mixing image references and fictitious imbrications of memory and where sounds confirm the work. The works must be shown in a loop and with the loudest sound, as it is the sound that definitely confirms their movements.

It is very important to observe the movement that accompanies each animated work. The process of developing animations, in addition to the physical presence of the work, has the intention of, at all times, re-signifying and transcending the form or forms in themselves. Hence providing the eye with a new perception at each moment of the work. Just like that. Thinking more and more. Writing and drawing too. Mary

Website: www.marydiiorio.com.br
Follow her on Instagram: @marydiiorio2019
Or contact her via email: mary_di_lorio@yahoo.com.br