Celina Portella (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1977) lives and works in São Paulo. She holds degrees in Fine Arts from Université Paris VIII (Saint-Denis) and in Design and Visual Communication from PUC-Rio, as well as a master's degree in Communication of the Body Arts from PUC-SP. Her research brings together photography, video, photo-objects, sculpture and performance.
Between 2002 and 2008, Portella worked as a performer-creator with Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças, an experience reflected in a poetics whose raw material is the body itself. Her research focuses on the representation of the body and its relationship to space, bringing together video, photography and sculptural devices. Her photo-objects question the qualities of each medium and the viewer's perception: the artist intervenes on the photographic surface with cuts, folds, ropes and body molds, expanding the image into physical space.
A distinctive feature of Portella's work is her refusal of an identifiable body. In many works, she conceals the face and dissolves autobiographical markers, making room for a body-without-identity capable of representing many others. Rather than asserting a fixed individuality, she enacts a multiplication of the self, an operation that dialogues with the tradition of self-portraiture without being reduced to it.
Nominated for the Prêmio PIPA (a leading Brazilian contemporary art award) in 2013 and 2017, she received awards at the XX Bienal Internacional de Artes Visuais de Santa Cruz (Bolivia, 2016), at Salón ACME / Casa Wabi Residency (Mexico, 2020), at the Luxembourg Art Prize (2021) and at the II Concurso de Videoarte da FUNDAJ (Recife, 2008). She has completed residencies at the Centre International d'Accueil et d'Échanges des Récollets (Paris, 2009), Bag Factory Artists' Studios (Johannesburg, 2018) and Casa Wabi (Oaxaca, 2020). Her solo exhibitions include Uma, nenhuma e cem mil (Zipper Galeria, 2025, curated by Ginevra Bria), Manobras (Zipper Galeria, 2020–21), Subtrações (Zipper Galeria, 2018), Reunião (Caixa Cultural São Paulo, 2019), Foto objetos (Museu Casa Sônia Menna Barreto, 2018), Movimento² (Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 2014), Vídeo-Boleba (Centro Cultural São Paulo, 2012) and Celina Portella: Instalações (Sesc Pinheiros, 2011). She has participated in group exhibitions including Histórias da Dança (MASP, 2020), TRIO Bienal (CCBB Rio de Janeiro, 2015), XX Bienal Internacional de Artes Visuais de Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia, 2016), Frestas Trienal de Artes (Sesc Sorocaba, 2017) and Strip Film Festival (Ménagerie de Verre, Paris, 2007).