Mariela Sancari

Argentina, 1976

Mariela Sancari lives and works in Mexico City since 1997. Her work revolves around identity, memory and truthfulness, and fiction in images. It examines personal relationships, the thin and elusive line that separates memories from fiction, and the tenuous value of the image as a real or affective document. She uses personal narratives to explore the limits of the scope of photography as a means of representation. Her work refers to both the affective dimension –although not sentimental– of autobiographical work, as well as formal explorations of the medium, through questions related to staging, self-referentiality in photographic practice, and its mechanisms of meaning.

Exhibitions · She has participated in numerous individual and group exhibitions in Buenos Aires, Guatemala City, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Athens, Barcelona, ​​Busan, Bratislava, Houston, Jaipur, Los Angeles, London, Madrid, among others.

Publications · Her first book Moisés (La Fábrica) was selected by several curators and specialists such as Sean O'Hagan, Tim Clark, Erik Kessels, Jörg Colberg, Larissa Leclair, Yumi Goto, and Colin Pantall as one of the best photobooks of 2015. In 2017 published her second book in collaboration with the writer Adolfo Córdova: Mr. & Dr. (This book is true), a photobook aimed at children and young people that explores the notion of the unknown through images and text. In 2021 she will publish El caballo de dos cabezas. Representación en diez actos (The Two-Headed Horse. Representation in ten acts), an investigation of the transition from the fixed image to the image performed with Asunción Casa Editora.

Collections · Her work is part of the Collection of the Yucatan Institute of Culture, the Alcobendas Arts Center in Spain, the Joaquim Paiva Collection in Rio de Janeiro, the Televisa Foundation, and the Image Center (Centro de la Imagen) in the Mexico City, as well as private collections in different parts of the world.

Awards · She has received numerous recognitions: Winner of the VI Yucatán National Visual Arts Biennial 2013 and the 2014 PHotoEspaña Discoveries Award, her work was selected at the XVI Photography Biennial of the Image Center (Centro de la Imagen) and received Honorable Mention at the XI Monterrey FEMSA Biennial and in the 2015 Buenos Aires Photo Award, among others. In 2020 she obtained the Fomento grant from Fundación Jumex for the publication of her next book.

Member of the National System of Art Creators FONCA, 2015-2018 and 2020-2023.