Karla Ruas ( 1988) was born in Montes Claros, MG - Brazil, currently living in Porto - PT
Visual artist and researcher, I develop research in natural pigmentation within painting and drawing. My practice investigates processes of material and perceptual transformation, understanding body, color, and territory as relational agents. Painting and drawing become spaces of slow, attentive processes, where practices of rest, contemplation, and connection with the natural world are built into the work itself, guiding gestures and rhythms in ways that resist extractive approaches.
The work engages with a rhizomatic logic, drawing on Deleuze’s ideas of multiplicity and Suely Rolnik’s concept of micropolitics of desire, situating each gesture and layer as part of a network of relations rather than a linear hierarchy. In dialogue with perspectives of counter-colonization, as articulated by Nego Bispo, the practice creates space for alternative temporalities, ethical relations, and forms of knowledge.
I am interested in the historical and symbolic dimensions of color, as well as the potential to imagine new mythologies and beings, where material, perception, and imagination intersect. Through these processes, the work unfolds as a poetics of attention, a material cosmoperception, and a site for relational, ethical, and transformative encounters.