Artist Statement/ Biography

Simone Couto is Brazilian-born and United States-based multi/interdisciplinary artist, poet, curator, and university professor. She holds a BA in Theater Arts and a MFA in Art Practice from the School of Visual Arts. She studied painting, drawing, and mixed media at the Arts Students League of NY. In her practice, she is committed to making art through the people and places she encounters. She explores our capacity to make a difference through mutual thinking-feeling-making. She investigates how both humans and places' identities and biographies are negotiated physically, emotionally, and constructed through the poetics of hospitality, relation, reciprocity, and belonging. She has worked with communities of immigrants for years in the US and indigenous communities in the Amazon, to honor her heritage. Her previous works have led her to engagements with landscape, nature, and remote communities. I have explored remote sites and soil in painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, and video, both physically and metaphorically under the goal of cultural preservation. Couto has been part of several residencies such as ISCP, MASSMoCA Museum Studios (twice), and the Hafnarborg Fine Arts Museum in Iceland. She has shown nationally and internationally, including the Science Museum of Seoul, South Korea, and several NYC places, such as PioneerWorks and Electronic Art intermix (EAI). Her works are in a few collections such as the NY Public Library. She teaches at School of Visual Arts in NYC.