Najla
Leroy

Brasil-Portugal

I’m Brazilian, born in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. Graduated in Graphic Design and Plastic Arts from the State University of Minas Gerais.

In Portugal, since 2015, I studied the Master in Graphic Design and Editorial Projects and the Specialization in Illustration at the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, where I am currently doing a PhD in Arts.
I teach Printing Techniques in the Visual Arts Degree at the University of Minho.

My research focuses on artist editions, investigating the creative processes in the artistic making of printing techniques. My artistic practice is guided by activities within the expanded field of print techniques. The search for the language of the engraving reflects a thought process in constant dialogue with the matrix, in which the registration of the various states and the accidents of the image are factors of surprise, making the artist a spectator of his own work.
My artistic work is autobiographical and develops in parallel with my quest for self-knowledge. My gaze is turned inward and I look for meanings for the relationships I establish with what is outside. The union between woman and nature is highlighted when following cycles and envisioning other notions of time, as each process has its own pace.
I base myself on Hundertwasser’s theory of five skins, which imagined other ways of understanding the relationship between the body, spaces and ideas that connect the world. My point of view starts from my feminine conscience, crosses my body-plant, resides in an illuminated liquid environment, travels the fertile path and transmutes in cyclic nature.

Aroused by curiosity and with the intention of freeing myself, I removed everything by the root in an exercise of knowledge and self-knowledge. In the “desraraizando” project, I reveal my nature, whether it is present in my internal gardens or on my external paths. I represent myself through the root metaphor, giving space for them to sprout in me. In order to understand these new connections, I analyzed rhizomatic systems, embedded living organisms, mapped the investigative path and embroidered a vegetal time. In the end, it was possible to conclude that “I walk without root”.