Bio

Mariana Aboim is an artist and PhD researcher at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. She tutors on the Fine Art, Photography, and Transformation Design bachelors, and in the autonomous practices at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Mariana’s practice-led research has been building on the ways the endurance of white cisheteropatriarchy manifests itself on the body. Mariana uses a recorded [spoken] word component that exercises speculative non-fiction as genre, articulating what she calls ‘material intangibilities’ to challenge the tendentious ways in which the corroborability of experiences is still dominated by western centred frameworks. Mariana conducts her investigation through an assemblic production of moving and still image, deploying methods that allow working with the viscerality of affect on practice-based approaches to what it can mean to draw theories with fine art [rather than about fine art]. Mariana further proposes how exploring nonconscious semiotic affective processes through ‘practice’ reveals paths working towards absent non-hetero futurities being materialised in the present.

CV

Education

— PhD Arts and Humanities, Royal College of Art London, School of Arts and Humanities, expected 2024, September 2018 - ongoing. Supervisors: Dr Pil Kollektiv and Dr Josephine Berry. With sponsorship by Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences for professional development
— Master Education in Arts, Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2014 - 2016.
— Summer School Human/ Inhuman/ Posthuman, Course Director: Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 2015.
— Postgraduate degree programme in sculpture, Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Teacher: Harald Klingelhöller, Karlsruhe, Germany, 2009 - 2010. 
— Licenciatura in Fine Art: Sculpture (five-year programme), Faculty of Fine Art, University of Lisbon, Portugal, 2003 - 2008.


Public Events

— Forthcoming, Penchantly gay, poster exhibition, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2023.
— Forthcoming, May 8th, 2023, “Fucking with grammar”, workshop/presentation of personal article in Queer multilinguality and embodied speech, Institute for Queer Theory, Berlin, Germany. http://www.queer-institut.de/en/multilingually-queer/.
— Affect, the nonconscious, and the immediacy of logic in spoken and written narratives, Series of public talks, exhibition, and publication, co-organised with Available & The Rat, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 2022. Organised with financial support from the Royal College of Art, London. https://www.availableandtherat.com/2022-ee.php.
— Smart Culture Conference, in cooperation with the Brave New World Conference – Beyond Human Festival. Workshop on inclusivity led by Wigbertson Julian Isenia (NWO/UvA/BTQRNL), Inez Blanca van der Scheer (Studio-i/UvA), Mariana d'Aboim Inglez Amaral Fernandes (Royal College of Art London/WdKA). 2019.
— Director, International conference: There’s No Going Back! A conference on activating strategies for ethical relational change within fine art education. Keynotes: Sruti Bala, Aminata Cairo, Jack Halberstam. contributions from Willem de Kooning Makes a Difference Research Group, Joy Mariama Smith, Anna Nazo and Amy Pickles. Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, May 2019. https:// www.wdka.nl/news-events/theres-no-going-back.
— Aboim, Mariana, Forrester, Shannon, Östholm, Cicilia, Self, Col, and Surkan, KJ, 2019, Conference or Workshop, Affective encounters, future imaginaries, visions for tomorrow in the now at 41st Annual NWSA (National Women’s Studies Association) Conference, San Francisco, CA USA, 14-17 November 2019.
— Entanglement, The Opera. Spoken word performance. Contribution: And Now? Royal College of Art, London, United Kingdom, January 2019. [available at: https://youtu.be/BYLneFLulik?t=3476].
— Black Feminism, Womanism and the Politics of Women of Colour in Europe, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 2017. Paper title: “active strategies of ethical relational change: bringing intersectional exchanges into the curriculum”.


Publications


— Forthcoming: Mariana Aboim, “Fucking with grammar”, in InterAlia Journal of Queer Studies,
vol. 17. co-edited by Anna T. and Antke A. Engel. (December 2023) https://doi.org/10.51897/ interalia.
— Mariana Aboim, “(re)Making of Histories — Embodied Memories of a Verbal Archive in the Work of Sandim Mendes”. in Atlantica: Contemporary art from Cabo-Verde, Guiné-Bissau & São Tomé e Príncipe and its Diasporas. edited by César Schofield Cardoso. Lisboa: Hagar, 2021 [Printed].
— Mariana Aboim, “Why There’s No Going Back!”, in Situationer Workbook/Situationer Cookbook, Rotterdam: Publication Studio, 2021 [Printed].
— Mariana Aboim and Rob Birch, “The Road to Mutation”, in Research Communiqués: Representation, London: Royal College of Art, School of Arts and Humanities. April 2022 [Printed].
— Mariana Aboim and Dave Johnson, “Immediacy of the Sensory”, in Prova 6, ed. Chantal Faust, London, UK: Royal College of Art (2021).
— Mariana Aboim, Rob Birch and Lianne Ho, “Representation’s Coup”, in Prova 6, ed. Chantal Faust, London, UK: Royal College of Art (2021).
— The possibilities of integrating queer pedagogy in a fine art curriculum, Master Thesis Dissertation, July 2016. [available at: http://meia.pzwart.nl/backend/wp- content/uploads/2017/05/Mariana-Fernandes_Graduation-Thesis-and- Project_MEiA-2016_digital-version1.pdf]


Summer School Presentations

— Summer School Gender and Diversity in Academia: Rethinking the Challenges, University of Groningen, the Netherlands, 2017. Paper title: The possibilities of integrating queer pedagogy in a fine art curriculum.
— Talking Bodies, Chester, United Kingdom, 2017. Paper title: “The possibilities of integrating queer pedagogy in a fine art curriculum”. Review available at: https://phdanger.wordpress.com/2017/05/09/talking-bodies-2017/ [Review title: Mariana Fernandes – The Possibility of Integrating Queer Pedagogy in a Fine Art Curriculum].


Teaching Experience

— Theory tutor, Autonomous Practices: Hacking, third year BA module, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, September 2019 - ongoing.
— Theory tutor, Against Neutrality, second year BA Fine Art, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, February 2019 – ongoing.
— Lead, No Title! (formerly Wildness) research group, third and fourth year BA Fine Art, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, January 2019 – ongoing.
— Theory tutor, Identity Politics, street activism and socio-political-cultural indivisible complex, second year BA Lifestyle Transformation Design, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, March 2019 - 2021.
— Tutor, educational project “Things Will Change”, TENT Rotterdam, the Netherlands, October - December 2019. Parallel to the exhibitions Boerenzij, Wapke Feenstra, and Wild Bet, Gil & Moti. https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/educatie/things-will-change/?ref=search&term=things%20will%20change
— Tutor, educational project “Me Myself and I”, TENT Rotterdam, the Netherlands, September - November 2018. Parallel to the exhibition Who do you think you are? https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/show/me- myself-and-i-2/
— Tutor, educational project “Genderosity”, TENT Rotterdam, the Netherlands, September - November 2017. Parallel to the exhibition Genderosity. https://www.tentrotterdam.nl/en/event/genderosity/
— Tutor, Critical dialogues, first-year BA Fine Art and Photography, Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, September 2015 - ongoing.