Latest news with #RosanaPaulino
New York Times
6 days ago
- Politics
- New York Times
A Black Brazilian Artist Who Wields Poetry and Persistence
Rosana Paulino, one of Brazil's most influential artists, works from a narrow three-story house in Pirituba, a neighborhood of simple homes and shops that huddle along the hillside in the northwest outskirts of São Paulo. Her small balcony looks toward a pocket park, a railway line and a nature preserve on a ridge that belies the urban sprawl beyond. The daughter of a cleaner and a house painter, Paulino has pushed her way with stubborn insistence from modest origins in the Black working class into Brazil's top institutions — at one time working clerical jobs for three years to pay for prep classes to get into the best universities. But she remains rooted in São Paulo's north-side neighborhoods, where Black culture formed around the rail yards and the warehouses where laborers transferred coffee and other crops before shipping them abroad. 'It's very important for me to stay here,' Paulino, 58, said, on a muggy afternoon in April, as a tropical rainstorm gathered. 'It's that old story — you start to have a name and money and so you move out of your community. No, no, no. That's absolutely not for me.' She emerged as an artist when bourgeois tastes and Modernism dominated the museums and schools, making little space for the work and perspectives of artists from Brazil's Black majority. Lately the climate has changed. A survey at the prestigious Pinacoteca de São Paulo museum in 2018 and participation in the 2023 São Paulo Biennial cemented Paulino's hometown recognition; her inclusion in the 2022 Venice Biennale, with some two dozen large-scale drawings of part-human, part-plant female figures, brought visibility abroad. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Forbes
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Intertwining Ferocity Of Feminine And Floral, Night And Day, Rosana Paulino Decodes Colonial Narratives
Rosana Paulino Untitled | Sem títu lo , 2025 graphite, acrylic and natural pigment on canvas ... More grafite, acrílico e pigmento natural sobre tela 133 x 96 x 4.5 cm 52 3/8 x 37 3/4 x 1 3/4 in Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York Photo credit: E studioEmObra A nude goddess figure with cropped dark hair and green eyes bends her arms at the elbows and lifts her forearms to extend open palms, indicating her nurturing and protective nature. White lilies sprout from her plump lips and hands, symbolizing purity, rebirth, and innocence, as they frame her form and draw together the natural landscape and the figure. In Brazil, white lilies are popular at weddings and baptisms, as well as for funeral arrangements to signify the deceased's return to a state of innocence and to express condolences. A diurnal bird, vibrant blue with a crimson crown and beak, crowns her head, extends its wings in tandem with the goddess' open palms, and appears alert and awake in the night. Viewers are captivated by her formidable presence, filling the monumental canvas which is cropped at her shins. At more than four-feet-tall and over three-feet wide, the life-size goddess commands attention as she gazes to the viewer's left. Rosana Paulino 's Untitled | Sem títu lo (2025), a graphite, acrylic, and natural pigment on canvas evokes emotion and forces an inquiry into the relationship between the nocturnal and diurnal. On view through June 14 at Mendes Wood DM in New York's Tribeca arts neighborhood, Diálogos do Dia e da Noite , a solo exhibition amplifying the far-reaching influence of the Afro-Brazilian contemporary artist, curator, and researcher born 1967, in São Paulo, is a highlight of New York Art Week. Examining the nuances in social, ethnic, and gender issues, especially the experiences of Black women and the ongoing consequences of racism and slavery in Brazil, Paulino fluidly works across sewing, collage, drawing, video, and installation to deconstruct colonial narratives and reconstruct image and memory. She infuses personal narratives into the sweeping phenomenological history of Brazil, exploring the nature of subjective, conscious experience and how individuals perceive and communicate their lived experience. Paulino uses the term 'psychic traces' to describe visual and conceptual markers that manifest the tenacious systems of power, control, and violence, as she maps colonial legacies. The exhibition welcomes us into diurnal at the street-level, and leads us into the nocturnal in the downstairs galleries. Our mood transforms with the imagery, as we feel the embrace of the visceral figures and depictions that delve deeper into the physical worlds of humans and plants and how those evoke myriad emotions. Mendes Wood DM Rosana Paulino from Senhora das plantas series/ da série Senhora das plantas , 2022 ... More acrylic, watercolor and graphite on paper acrílica, aquarela e grafite sobre papel 41 x 31 cm (drawing) 16 1 /8 x 12 1/4 in (drawing) 52 x 42 x 5 cm (framed) 20 1/2 x 16 1/2 x 9 7/8 in (framed) Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York Photo credit: EstudioEmObra While Paulino's large-scale works appear life sized and can be appreciated from a distance, more intimate works like Untitled | Sem título (2025), a dermatographic pencil and dry pastel on paper triptych demands close inspection. The two outer canvases depict downward-facing white lilies against the black background, framing the central goddess figure, drawing vines toward her heart center. While most lily species emerge from tall, upright stems and grow directly from bulbs, the Easter lily vine (Beaumontia grandiflora), produces a fragrant white lily-like flower. Paulino's latest body of work presents an otherworldly perspective into the natural environment. We may wonder, what do plants do at night? While they lack the complex neurological function needed to dream, their circadian rhythm can be imagined as an ethereal state. Rosana Paulino Untitled | Sem título , 2025 dermatographic pencil and dry pastel on paper lápis ... More dermatográfico e pastel seco sobre papel 42 x 29.5 cm (cada des enho) 16 1/2 x 11 5/8 in (each drawing) 53 x 104 x 5 cm (todas molduradas) 20 7/8 x 41 x 2 in (all framed) Courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York Photo credit: EstudioEmObra In Diálogos do Dia e da Noite , Paulino revisits archetypes, female bastions, goddesses or guides encountered in her ongoing series Senhora das Plantas ( Lady of Plants ) series, evolving with limbs burgeoning into tree roots, hair flourishing as leaves, or fingers blooming into flowers. Her figures stand, crawl, or kneel, as if searching tirelessly for deeper meaning in darkness. Many of her smaller works behave like diaries we might stumble upon in a nightstand, inviting an innermost dialogue. Installation view of 'Diálogos do Dia e da Noite', a solo show of Afro-Brazilian artist Rosana ... More Paulino, at Mendes Wood DM in New York's Tribeca arts neighborhood, @2024 all rights reserved For those inclined to explore outdoors, Paulino's large-scale mural, The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night (2024), is concurrently on view at New York's High Line and . Rosana Paulino, The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night, November 2024 – December 2025. ... More Location Adjacent to the High Line at 22nd Street. Timothy Schenck 2015 As you traverse the seemingly endless array of art on display throughout New York, seek out Mendes Wood DM's debut at Frieze New York , with a major presentation of Japanese sculptor and installation artist Kishio Suga, who will be celebrated in a solo exhibition, opening July 25 at Dia Beacon . Founded in in São Paulo in 2010 by Felipe Dmab, Matthew Wood, and Pedro Mendes to showcase international and Brazilian artists, Mendes Wood DM now has locations in Brussels, Paris, and Germantown, New York. Kishio Suga Sliced Stones , 2018 eight stones a pprox 19 x 19 x 26 inches each (ground stone) a ... More pprox 2.5 x 24 x 16.5 inches each (sliced stone) Mendes Wood DM
