Daniela Granja (1971), lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Graduated in economics, psychopedagogy and art education, with a postgraduate degree in Philosophy from PUC-RJ, she has been working with visual arts since 2017. In her practice, she uses various materials such as photography, ropes (where she uses weaving technique - macramé), wires and , more recently, seeds and organic materials. 

All the research has a strong connection with my history in psychopedagogy and, consequently, I bring to my work the attempt to re-signify an expression often used in my old experience as a psychopedagogue: “incarnate knowledge”.

It's about astonishment and its intensity. A knowledge acquired not only through the concept, but through experimentation and the senses.

Emotion, contrary to what was thought, is fundamental in the construction of knowledge. We are affected by the other/object and it is from this contagious and violent experience that we undergo transformations.

Therefore, my research also focuses on the memory and the meaning of the individual's relationships in his/her own history (biological, contextualized and emotional), which happens in a continuous and endless way.

  Most of my works present a tension of meanings, which try to express this intangible space of webs of relationships between us, nature and the world, using a language that brings the feminine, as a power of life, transformation and care in relationships with others. 

More recently, the use of organic materials enters my production in an uncomfortable dialogue with materials of industrial production, such as hook, wire and spear; trying to produce a hybrid form - a body of its own and its new limits.

One of these works - “Incarnation”, is exhibited at the XXI International Bienal de Cerveira, Portugal, curated by Helena Mendes Pereira.