Ap Silvestre

Ap Silvestre
Lisbon, Portugal

STATEMENT

I’m a self-taught visual artist, moved by the will to create and reflect my emotional, political, social and aesthetic perspectives of the world and life. There are various themes that come into my work: nature and our relationship to it; human identity and our inneranimality, (de)construction of identity/ies; gender-body-mind relationships; ageing; home care; women and work invisibility; nothing — doing without thinking or meaning. I have five series I am presently working on that address these themes in various ways:

Planet A
A House Doesn’t Clean Itself 
Nothing Nada Rien
COVID With An E

As a visual artist, my work combines varying degrees of figuration and abstraction. For me, almost any kind of paper is valuable for collage, but I particularly like old magazines where I can appreciate how world has changed; and nature magazines, like National Geographic. Besides paper, I also like to use mixe media materials (acrylics, plaster, etc). I have been experimenting with techniques like decollage or textile collage. I don’t dismiss working digitally, but I really like the physicality of analog collage, and the risk implied in it.  In collage as in life, anything can happen until the end. And I really like that.

BIO

Ap Silvestre was born in Lisbon in 1969. She studied Clinical Psychology (1996) and music therapy because she liked Biology, but also the human soul. She always wanted to live abroad and, in 2000, she travelled to Colombia to work in Cooperation and Development. She fell in love in Colombia. She bore a child and she was reborn with her. There, she also completed a MA in Gender and Development, which allowed her to work for many years as a Gender Consultant for NGOs. In 2009, while living in Barcelona, she decided to try collage for the first time to help her quit smoking. Collage first became a hobby and then a passion. She came back to Lisbon in 2012 and she (re)discovered her passion for sound, art, dance and psychology. She worked as a DJ, as a sound recorder, as an ayurvedic massage practitioner, and as a facilitator in movement and personal development groups. In 2017, she began working as a psychological counselor using artistic mediators, including collage. She joined Instagram to show and sell her collage, and that opened a new world to her. She came across different collagists, styles, and techniques, which allowed her to expand her techniques, practice and creativity. She promotes collage workshops that help people develop their creativity and, since 2021, she has facilitated collage and mental health workshops for young people all over Portugal. In 2020, she participated as a resident collage artist in A Salto Festival, in Elvas. She is always experimenting with new techniques and compositions, in collage as in life.

ARTIST CONTACT

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IMAGES