#thegirlinthegasmask

[zoloftandchai]

Fake Artist Bio - Luiza Prado

Luiza Jesus Prado (stagename: Hifa Cybe) is a transdisciplinary artist born in Guaratingueta, Brazil, in 1988. Although her experiments in employing a plethora of mediums are impressive for onlookers and critics alike, it is the chilling narratives behind her work that make her an artist of interest.

Since 2016, Prado has enlisted her alter-ego - 'Hifa Cybe' - to animate love, loss, angst, and grief in her work. A photoseries called 'Sinto Muito (I'm so sorry)' depicts the process of writing letters to a dead lover. The conspicuous presence of blood and meaty, sculptural elements resembling human flesh have successfully stirred conversations surrounding intent amidst art critics - has Hifa's (or rather, Prado's) lover been murdered? Are there more ominous realities concealed under what the viewer can digest?

Prado plays with these reviews and reactions all the same. She employs subliminal messaging via her 'sordid' imagery and somber titles to breathe a somewhat dangerous and unstable persona into Hifa. In I Miss You (2017), she wholly embodies Hifa to ritualistically burn her love letters in what appears to be an anti-demonic prayer ring. The viewers are left to ponder on whether this translates to Hifa gaining closure for the mistakes of a past lover, or if they've conversely witnessed Hifa begging for redemption/forgiveness after committing an unspeakable crime of passion.

More recently, Prado's ideations seem to have shifted from exposing Hifa's story to introspecting on her part in it. Works such as Girl With The Gas Mask (2020) and Psylocybin (2020) address the constant paranoia that subsumes Hifa, who, in living in guilt from doing something still unknown to Prado's audience, resorts to self-medicating with narcotics. Needless to say, the artist indubitably posesses the artistic direction, vision, and patience it takes to create (and curate) a wonderfully mysterious and layered 'second life' in her portfolio.