Alice Miceli is a Brazilian artist known for her unique approach to photography. She focuses on landscapes affected by historical violence and environmental catastrophe. Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, she currently divides her time between Rio and New York.
Alice has participated in numerous artist residencies, including Yaddo, Bogliasco, Bemis, Djerassi, and the Dora Maar House, along with stints at MacDowell. During her first residency at MacDowell, Alice began work on her extensive project, "In Depth (minefields)," which crafted photographic representations of landscapes impacted by landmines and other unexploded ordnance remnants of war. She traveled to numerous locations worldwide to undertake it, including Cambodia, Colombia, Bosnia, and Angola. "In Depth (minefields)" was the theme of the international conference “Traumatic Landscapes,” as well as a solo exhibition, at the Escola das Artes in Porto, Portugal, in 2022, and was also featured at the Pera Museum as part of the 17th Istanbul Biennial that year.Her previous long-term project, the "Chernobyl Project," the final stages of which she also worked on at MacDowell, premiered at the 29th São Paulo Biennial. This work examines the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, using radiographic techniques to visualize the invisible threat of radiation. In the United States, it was presented for the first time at the visual art galleries of the Americas Society in New York in 2020, receiving widespread critical acclaim. It was featured in the New York Times, BOMB, and Art in America, among other major publications.
In 2014, Alice was awarded the PIPA Prize, one of the most prestigious contemporary art prizes in Brazil. The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art from Rio de Janeiro, the IP Institute, also in Rio, as well as the PLMJ Foundation in Lisbon, to name a few, have included her work in their permanent collections.
During her recent residency at MacDowell in 2024, Alice started preliminary research for a new long-term project she is embarking on: a photographic investigation of urban warfare, exploring military strategy and tactics in cities turned into battlefields. Her artistic practice continues to grapple with the complexities of representing landscapes burdened by conflict and trauma.
