MARYLOU GUERRA

Berlin-based painter Marylou Guerra recalibrates art historical approaches to straightforward portraiture and still life, casting these enduring genres in a fresh political and contemporary light, while keeping them rooted in a deeply personal context of community and dance.

Underworlds travels, ancient shamanic practises, costumes and traditions have always taken a big part in Marylou’s narrative. She opposes herself to “civilisations”’s judgement on traditional societies, the idea of western progress, and wishes to expose their millennial understanding of the world on a pedestal . 

Reflections about human evolution and it s future without rituals: by staying with the trouble, and traveling deeper into the underworld, we’ll be able to find the resources to aid our planet. 

Music, poetry and painting don’t have sharp boundaries. Icons and idols, gestures, notes, phrases and beats, all melt in profund devotional mythologies. Marylou paints avant garde musicians as well as rappers and djs, gods in her own cosmogology.

Series of paintings, details from press photographs of the 2020 Beirut Blast

early works and illustrations