Maria José Oliveira – Escultura Habitada, 1988
Maria José Oliveira – 3 œuvres de la série Corpo Contentor /container body, 2005

Maria José Oliveira’s wearable sculpture extends the body beyond its own skin. Its woven framework reimagines the skeleton – the structure that supports and outlasts the body – as an external architecture that envelops the torso. Constructed through weaving, stitching and moulding, the work creates an inhabitable space around the body, expanding its outline while remaining responsive to movement. The sculpture is completed only in the act of wearing. It changes with the movements of its wearer while retaining the traces of making and use. Neither sculpture nor adornment alone, it reimagines the relationship between object and body as one of continual negotiation. The fragility of its materials foregrounds the body’s transience, making change intrinsic to the work.

Initially trained in ceramics, Maria José Oliveira gradually expanded her practice to include sculpture, collage, jewellery, drawing, and installation. She favours the use of raw, often organic materials – such as dried leaves, bread dough, and vegetable resin – to explore the relationship between traces of the human body and the natural world, while rejecting the notion of the artwork as a precious object.