The artist
Kênia
Bittencourt
Visual artist in Maceió, Brazil. The details are what make the difference.
The studio began with restoration. Family statues that arrived broken, the paint worn away and the face almost gone — and that went back whole, without losing what was old about them.
From redoing other people's work for so long came the wish to make her own. Today the studio models, casts, paints and ages its own statues, and still takes in pieces for restoration.
Nothing here is made in series. Each statue is painted one by one, and the face is always left for last — it is the face that decides whether the piece is finished.
People who have commissioned
About the work
The statue arrived better than in the photographs. The face has a serenity you do not get in a factory piece — and that was what the congregation noticed first.
I sent in my grandmother's Our Lady, broken in three. She came back whole, and still with the old paint underneath, just as I had asked. I cried when I opened the box.
We commissioned the oratory without really knowing what we wanted. Kênia made three sketches until she got it right. The deadline was met to the day.