Maristela Ribeiro was born in 1960 in Feira de Santana, in the state of Bahia, and lives and works between her hometown and Salvador. Her artistic career began in the mid-1990s with her participation in Art Salons; since then, she has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, salons, and biennials in Brazil and abroad, earning awards and distinctions and establishing herself as a recognized figure in the contemporary art scene.

Her education includes a Ph.D. in Visual Arts, a Master’s degree in Visual Poetics, and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts. This academic background supports a plural practice that spans photography, painting, and public space intervention, fostering a continuous dialogue between image and disciplines such as sociology and anthropology.

Since 2004, she has created interventions in public spaces, abandoned buildings, ruins, and museums, transforming places and objects while giving visibility to subjects often marginalized. Her installations, frequently structured around photography, generate compositions of strong evocative power and offer new interpretations of layered and everyday contexts.

Optical illusion is a recurring poetic device in her work: through effects of displacement and visual ambiguity, the artist alters the viewer’s perception and opens alternative interpretative possibilities, revealing the tensions between representation and reality. In 2017, during her doctoral studies, she developed the concept of “fábulas visuais” (“visual fables”): images that do not merely reproduce, but construct open-ended narratives. Her installations thus become immersive environments that engage the viewer’s body and gaze, expanding the notion of the image beyond two-dimensionality.

In her painting, the theme of childhood frequently appears, oscillating between the fantastic and the unsettling. These depictions, seemingly delicate and gentle, often conceal an underlying unease that invites reflection on memory and meaning. In other series, her research focuses on intimate and everyday worlds, observed with sensitivity to fragility and emotional depth.

Overall, Maristela Ribeiro’s work reveals a consistent awareness of social issues: vulnerability, solitude, inequality, and gender themes emerge as central concerns. Her artistic practice combines conceptual rigor with poetic strength, turning the image into a tool of visibility and critical inquiry into contemporary society.