ALESSANDRA MARTINS
Visual Artist|Writer & Filmmaker
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou,
Artist Bio
Alessandra Martins is a Brazilian writer and visual artist based in the United States. Her work moves across photography, moving image, film, poetry, and performance, exploring memory, identity, belonging, ancestry, and the body.
Born in Duque de Caxias, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Alessandra began writing at an early age. Her literary practice remains an important foundation of her work, particularly her engagement with Afro-Brazilian literature and questions of identity, memory, and belonging. She is the author of Voa, Sankofa, Voa! (2021) and O Sol Brilha Para Todos (2023), and her writing has been published in Cadernos Negros and other literary publications.
Her visual practice has grown from this relationship with words and lived experience. Through photography and moving image, she explores the body, personal and collective memory, migration, motherhood, ancestry, and the experience of living across different places and cultures. Her work often brings together self-portraiture, family archives, poetic language, sound, and performance.
Her audiovisual work includes the poetic short film Ser Livre (2018), which received an Honorable Mention from IberCultura Viva, in collaboration with the UNESCO Representation Office in Brazil, and was later selected for Ecocine in 2026. In 2026, her experimental short film RISING received the Best Experimental Film award at the Berlin Women Cinema Festival and was officially selected for the Women International Film & TV Creative Youth Festival in Nicosia, Cyprus, and the 17th Bridges International Film Festival in Corinth, Greece.
She also participated in the Black and Indigenous Narratives Laboratory at FLUP in partnership with Rede Globo in 2022.
Her academic background includes studies in Portuguese Language and Literature, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous History and Culture, and Marketing and Branding in Brazil. She currently continues her studies in Liberal Arts in the United States.
In 2025, she became a mother, an experience that transformed her relationship with time, care, and creation, and continues to influence her visual practice and her understanding of love.
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