My name is Milenna Casseb Saraiva. I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1979. I come from a family of musicians and artists who have really inspired and motivated me to be who I am today. I’ve been drawing and dancing since I was really young. My days were completely occupied by intensive Competition Stage Aerobics training, exercising eight hours a day. I was part of the Sao Paulo Aerobics team competing all over the Brazil. Our team won (almost) every competition in the ensuing years and I myself had accumulated lots of medals, contusions and sketchbooks. After six years of competition, I lost my passion for Aerobics and decided to pursue my academic interests in the arts. When I turned 18, I moved to the United States by myself to study abroad. Aerobics has given me strength, discipline and persistence, which I consider my best qualities today.

In July of 1998 I took the first drawing class of my life and found true love: art. Art is the language of my thoughts. I find it easier to paint than to use words. The lights, the darks, the layers of depth that comes from playing with textures and colors, they all give me a freedom that I cannot find in Portuguese or English. Painting is my quiet way of expressing my heritage and questioning social values. My work has become a tool for me to narrate my life experiences in parables. There is a connection between my work and that of Surrealists, especially in their search for the miraculous in everyday things and situations, together with their nourishment of analogical thinking. The paintings reflect my personal mythology. I am looking for an opening for the viewer to enter their own thoughts and words, which I create in my mind, while encouraging the projection of one’s own interpretations and dreams onto the ambiguous images I create.

My work today has a strong political and emotional background. I feel that with all the corruption , war, terror and disrespect to nature and the human life itself, as an artist I must comment and criticize what’s happening. My work has also some feminist tendencies. I as a Brazilian woman and an artist, living in a patriarchal world, and living in the most superficial place on earth (Los Angeles, California), feel the necessity to comment on how it feels to be and experience those things.
Some of my paintings depict the struggle between the faceless crowds with its collective powering opposition to the individual with her or his solo energy. One of my latest series is comprised portraits, revealing the fragility, vulnerability, and darkness of everyone through an exploration of different mediums, dramatic light sources, brush strokes and techniques.

I work primarily with oil paint on canvas and wood board but I’m constantly experimenting new mediums such as video projections on a painted canvas and some collage. I also work with various canvases placing them together. I find challenge in giving the canvas an extra dimension and blurring the line between sculpture and painting.

I paint from my intuition. I paint my dreams, ideals, opinions and frustrations. My paintings have been and will always be an expression of my emotions and a quiet protest about this world we are living in…actually, dying in.