Amara Mani Ribeiro Fossati

Amara Mani has qualms about leaving her bathroom door wide open and inviting us to watch her porcelain skin crack and the cassava roots grow beneath the wooden floorboards. For her, the persona is always the self, even when refracted through mirrors, screens and the gazes of others. By discovering the taste of her own flesh, she has drawn new strength, enabling her to chew up her enemies more effectively. At L’Abri, she would like to find self-discipline and learn to channel her appetites, without, however, giving up what nourishes her.

Amara Mani Ribeiro Fossati is a visual artist and performer of Swiss and Brazilian origin. Initially trained as an Interactive Media Designer, she subsequently turned to the visual arts and obtained her bachelor’s degree at HEAD - Geneva.

Through autofictional texts inspired by intimate subjects, she explores notions of gaze and engages with questions of identity and decoloniality.

Anthropophagic metaphors are a recurring theme in her work. She writes about and portrays what she finds difficult to digest, both on a personal and collective level. Far from shying away from discomfort, she devours herself in order to better understand the root of her unease. By probing the very fabric of her own body, she exposes the contradictions and tension between her cultural heritages and their colonial histories.

With a touch of drama, Amara Mani enjoys playing with certain conventions borrowed from cinema and theatre. Also rooted in the conventions of her generation, she is influenced by the aesthetics of digital streams and the contemporary mythologies created on social media. It is therefore only natural that she makes use of this content and these tools during her performances. Internet archives, video compilations, film clips, personal images, screens / live webcams are thus brought into play to multiply or amplify her narratives, offering the audience multiple perspectives and various projection surfaces.