Mario Pedro Soares

Mario Pedro Soares (1982) is a Mozambican artist based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He moved from Mozambique to South Africa in 2008. Soares initially worked as an artist/embroiderer for Boitumelo in Hillbrow, however in 2010 he began his studies at Artist Proof Studio. Soares graduated in 2013 and proceeded to develop his skill in etching. Soares’ medium is printmaking, and he works primarily in etching on steel plates. In his body of work, he divulges into the metaphor of the road to explore concepts concerning the processes of growing up, travel, and migration. As an immigrant himself, Soares chooses to use faceless and generalized ‘identity-less’ subjects as he feels it gives a voice to the ways in which immigrants seek to make themselves invisible in their new home country, fearful of entrenched xenophobia. In 2014, he became an intern at APS at the Pro-Shop. Soares now works as an independent artist full-time from his studio in Johannesburg.