As the title of a series of paintings, Saboneteiras [Soapdishes] suggests a very narrow focus for a body of work. Yet it accurately describes the theme of the 31 small scale canvases Ana Elisa Egreja conceived and painted during the 2020-2021 period of quarantine in São Paulo. But what a rich typology and what immense variation the artist has identified in a subject so apparently banal. Each is painted as if it is a life-size section of a bathroom wall, adorned with ceramic tiles in a vast array of colours, ranging in type from elaborately painted, through patterned with geometric motifs, to small mosaics. The soap dishes are niches, or inset porcelain forms, or metal plates fixed onto the tiles, or are made of glass and sit on shelves. They contain one or more pieces of soap, and sometimes a sponge. Taps are visible in a couple of the works, and in one the corner of a bathroom mirror can be seen. Every home has some version of this scene, an intimate glimpse of a life: the paraphernalia of the basic human function of washing. While a wide range of décor styles are included in each painting – modernist, popular, traditional, sometimes mixed within the same work – the majority have a slightly old-fashioned character, the sort of design aesthetic associated with the last century, possibly in the bathroom of an elderly relative. Somehow you imagine remembering such bathroom scenes, such soap dishes with their tiled surrounds. And yet, however convincing they appear to be, none of them exist in reality.

The Saboneteiras paintings are a fusion of memory and invention, of references collected by Egreja and collaged together from remembered, actual or digital sources. Through necessity, since they were painted in a domestic setting while the artist was home schooling her children, they are all a restricted size, giving them an intense focus. The first tile design was sourced from the floor of Egreja’s studio, the location where she fashions her tableaux of fantastical scenes, which she paints on large canvases. Another tile pattern is a modernist design by Athos Bulcão, and a single colour scheme originates from Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House, rendered blue instead of green. There are a series of motifs including flowers and birds by Fulvio Pennacchi, and a black and white tile is taken from a design element by Flávio de Carvalho. Zellige mosaics characteristic of the Alhambra Palace in Grenada are included, and the evolvement of the Arab influence on Spanish and Portuguese ceramics is evident in other works. Further tracing the history of colonisation, Dutch tiles from a house in Recife are referenced. A mosaic rendering of a splendidly coloured parrot comes from a house in Manaus, and art nouveau tiles were discovered in the 25 Março street in São Paulo. This proliferation of tile styles forms the subject of the series alongside the soap receptacles themselves. A highly distinctive group within Egreja’s practice, they are also reminiscent of glimpses or sections of the paintings of interiors she has worked on consistently for the last 15 years.

Before the Saboneteiras, the only earlier series of small paintings by Egreja, from 2016, featured arrangements of fruit, flowers and contemporary bottles and packaging. Although each was painted as though viewed through dappled glass, a screen device she has often used to differentiate foreground and background in her work, these are visible allusions to the tradition of Still Life painting. What particularly attracts the artist to the subject of Still Life are ‘the vestiges or traces revealed by the objects’, the coded cultural and social references they contain. The genre of Still Life, as it came to be defined historically in relation to European object studies

in the 17th century, was considered the lowest in the hierarchy of painting genres by the Academy, since its focus was on everyday objects rather than the heroic human form. It also ranked below landscape in importance. Nevertheless this ‘lowly’ painting style was immensely popular, and particularly flourished during the Golden Age of Dutch art, with vast variation emerging within distinct categories. Among these are Vanitas, typically containing a skull alongside objects signifying worldly pursuits, to imply the brevity of human life; the flower Still Life, in which wealth is demonstrated through the inclusion of exotic species; and the spare, monastic study of simple vessels and fruit or vegetables, which are more spiritual in association.

That Egreja is particularly drawn to the work of 17th century Dutch artists is unsurprising, given the significance of light and perspective in her paintings. She particularly admires the interiors of Johannes Vermeer, but also Still Life works by Pieter Claesz, who painted highly allegorical scenes, Clara Peeters, known for her breakfast or banquet pieces, and Jan Weenix, whose speciality was the detailed painting of dead animals. The directness of these works speaks to the realism that is such an evident feature of Egreja’s work, but these scenes were also entirely staged, imaginatively contrived inventions conveying a multiplicity of underlying narratives. While rationality and realism are clear impulses in Egreja’s work, the imaginary and the fantastical are also significant aspects of her paintings of highly stylised interiors populated by animals and birds. In the Saboneteiras she has employed a rational organisational structure to explore limited sections of entirely imaginary everyday scenes, which nevertheless contain high and popular cultural references that imply a range of narratives and histories.

Periods of quarantine or ‘lockdown’ made necessary by the tragic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be compared with actual imprisonment or wartime curfew. But the resourcefulness of artists in adapting to conditions of confinement is found throughout history, and surprising and important work has often emerged from difficult circumstances. When placed in the position of having to make do, to work within the limits of what is possible, that which is close to hand or incidental takes on a new significance, and imaginative invention and memory become essential tools. Deprived of the environment of her studio and many of the usual resources and support structures, Ana Elisa Egreja used her confinement to produce intensely detailed paintings of the most incidental of subjects, creating in the process a fascinating lexicon of overlooked cultural material.

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Text originally published in the book Saboneteiras, Act., São Paulo, Brazil, 2021