Zélia Mendonça's art derives from the new trend that, in recent decades, has marked contemporary art, both for its audacity and sometimes for its denial of true aesthetic creation.
Zélia Mendonça's works make use of objects such as busts, chairs, and lamps, she transfigures them, creating fascinating things, even if they originate from our everyday life. In fact, the fascination comes from this transfiguration.
It is, therefore, from this clash, from the banal with the oneiric, that the charm of the works she invents is born. This invention - or reinvention - be it of a female torso or a simple chair - comes about through the profusion of colours and unusual elements she uses to cover them up and drag us into the dream.
These works sometimes evoke the scenarios of a kind of surreal theatre and, at the same time, seem to be impregnated with the magic of the rituals of Brazilian black culture. It is, therefore, a mixture of the sophisticated and the popular.
Ferreira Gullar