Marisa Portolese, MFA
- Professor, Photography, Studio Arts
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Sign in to editResearch areas: portraiture, women, storytelling, autobiography, representation, feminism, family life, narrative, youth culture, psychological space, emotional landscape, cultural heritage, identity, role playing, staged/constructed images, studio photography, childhood, landscape immigrant identity, oral history
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Biography
Biography
Marisa Portolese is a Canadian-Italian, visual artist born in Montreal, Quebec. She is a full Professor in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University. Portraiture, representations of women, and figures in nature are recurrent subjects in her artistic practice. Autobiography and familial and cultural heritage are equally prominent themes explored through the genre of storytelling, the narrative still and moving image. She often produces large-scale colour photographs, rich in painterly references that concentrate on elucidating facets of human experiences in relation to psychological and physical environments regarding identity and spectatorship. She attempts to weave together gesture, affect, and the nuances of the gaze, to create an immersive and emotional landscape for the viewer.
Upon graduating with an MFA degree from Concordia University in 2001, she has produced many photographic projects,which have received critical acclaim and featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions widely shown in Canada, Europe and the United States. From 2017 to2019, she was the Artist in Residence at the McCord Museum in Montreal. Her work during this residency culminated as a solo show and a catalogue publication entitled In the Studio with Notman. Alongside her exhibition record, critics have written about her work in various journals, magazines,newspapers, art books and periodicals. She has four published monographs: UnChevreuil à la Fenêtre de ma Chambre (2003), Antonia’s Garden (2012)In the Studio with Notman (2018) and Goose Village (2023). She has been awarded grants from the Canada and Québec Arts Councils and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and in 2022, she received a Concordia University Research Fellow Award. In addition, her works are included in various corporate, museum and private collections.
Areas of expertise
Archival research, autobiography, contemporary art, curation, photography, portraiture, the representation of women, publications, oral history, writing
Research interests
Goose Village (publication)
Marisa Portolese
Goose Village-The Forensic Archive
Marisa Portolese
Goose Village-Family Portrait on Forfar Street
Marisa Portolese
In the Studio with Notman
Marisa Portolese
In the Studio with Notman
Marisa Portolese
In the Studio with Notman (publication)
Marisa Portolese
Antonia's Garden
Marisa Portolese
Antonia's Garden (publication)
Marisa Portolese
Teaching activities
Teaching activities 2025-2026
Portraiture and Social Identity
Friday 1:30 to 5:30 pm
Fall 2025
Photo 610/611-Graduate Studio
Wednesday 1:30-5:30 pm
Publications
In the Studio with Notman
McCord Museum
Text by Hélène Samson
Montréal, Québec, 2018
10 x 12 inches, 92 pages
ISBN : 978-1-895615-36-4
Belle de Jour II
Belle de Jour II Boxset
Photography by Marisa Portolese
Montréal, Québec, 2014
4 3/8 x 5 7/8 inches, 38 postcards,
Antonia's Garden
Antonia's Garden/Le Jardin d'Antonia
UMA, La Maison de l'image et de la photographie
Photography by Marisa Portolese
Text by James D. Campbell
Montréal, Québec, 2012
Hardcover Edition
8,75 x 11,5 inches, 80 pages
ISBN : 978-0-9878709-0-2
Limited Edition with Print
Signed and numbered edition of the book accompanied by a choice of one of two 8x10 inch chromogenic print
Un Chevreuil à la fenêtre de ma Chambre
Un Chevreuil à la fenêtre de ma Chambres
Collection Des Photographes, Dazibao Publications
Photography by Marisa Portolese
Text by Marie-Ève Gagnon
Montréal, Québec, 2003
80 pages
ISBN : 978-2-922135-19-0