Farm Management Instructions
The works in this series take as a reference a letter of the same title from the collection of the Museu Afro Brasil in São Paulo. The original document systematizes the treatment of enslaved people with the goal of maximizing profits. Within this context, the series confronts the memory that romanticizes the country's colonial and imperial periods. Through contrasts of scale, the works represent the social organization of a period when slavery was a defining factor in consolidating a vicious foundation of inequality that persists to this day.
The Seller of Miniature Characters
The series The Seller of Miniature Characters addresses the dynamics of religious power today. The works depict spaces occupied by a street vendor who sells miniatures of characters linked to different power systems—figures who control a large part of the territory in cities like Rio de Janeiro. They are police officers, politicians, and members of evangelical churches acting together to dominate low-income communities and suburban areas through armed enforcement. The series suggests that the rise of these actors accentuates a violent division of power, money, and urban space, permeated by faith.
Jesus and His Theocratic Project for the 2000s
In this series, the history of Western art and architecture is used as a reference to analyze the trajectory and transformations of Christianity over the centuries, from its consolidation in the medieval period and the expansion of colonial Christianity to contemporary churches. By appropriating this visual tradition, the series exposes that the instrumentalization of the figure of Jesus is a continuous mechanism, always adapted by institutions to sustain and legitimize projects of control.
Constantino's Dream
The interest in establishing historical comparisons, especially between projects of power that articulate religion and politics, guides much of my work. It was precisely an outgrowth of this investigation—which until then had been focused on the production of figurative paintings—that led to the creation of this first series of abstract works.
The starting point was a visit to the Cathedral of Arezzo, home to the fresco cycle by Piero della Francesca. The narrative represented there is based on a decisive moment in Western history: the legalization of Christianity by Emperor Constantine in the 4th century. This episode marks a profound turning point in civilization—the decline of the polytheistic ancient world and the affirmation of Christianity as the dominant religion.
The version consecrated by Western art history, represented by Piero della Francesca, suggests that Constantine's decision was motivated by a divine message received in a dream. However, historical interpretations indicate that the liberation of Christian worship was also linked to a political strategy to gain support and consolidate power. Constantine seems to have understood that the legitimacy granted to an emperor by a single God would provide the stability he needed. It is precisely this instrumentalization of religion for political ends that focus my interest. In this sense, this episode with Constantine is just another example, and not very different from what we see today.
If there are different readings of such an important moment, and given that art history has based itself on a medieval fable, what did Constantine actually dream before the battle that would legitimize him as emperor? In the absence of that image, these works are just another attempt to translate this dream.
Provider's Room
The reference of this work is the Gallery of Providers of Santa Casa de Misericórdia do Rio de Janeiro, which displays the portraits of its Providers from the early 19th century to the present time. The Space was fully reproduced in the painting and the added information relate to the background of the portrayed Providers. Although benefactors, some of the Providers were charged of unjust enrichment, slavery; of being large landowners, politically favored; and were removed for having diverted resources of the Institution.
In short, it is a small group that make up a charitable system with its own rules and policies and which, due to its longevity, is able to set parameters for the ethical values and interests of a portion of the Brazilian high society.
The Saint Suppressed by Ornaments
Objects and images are fundamental to the realization and materialization of the ideas that form a religious system; meanings are attached to them, and emotions are directed toward what they represent. In the case of Christianity, these symbols—saints, angels, the Bible, the cross, among others—are commonly presented with a wide repertoire of ornaments. The purpose of this combination is for the ensemble to evoke feelings of celebration, worship, and the sublime.
Although the primary characteristic of the ornament is aesthetic, its importance in the religious context goes beyond a decorative function; it is capable of presenting and defining the value of the symbol it adorns, as well as driving the narrative of the religious context on its own.
The series The Suppression of the Saint by the Ornament consists of paintings and drawings where the images of saints from altarpieces and oratories are replaced by other ornaments, so that the composition is overtaken by a semantic ensemble whose aesthetic dimension relates directly to the memory and values of Christian culture.
Gold Series
In medieval sacred painting, gold leaf was used to emphasize the spiritual and supernatural dimension of images. In the work Saint Anthony Beaten by Demons (1423–1426) by Stefano di Giovanni (Il Sassetta), the artist painted on a wooden panel previously covered with this material. At some point in history, a devotee, reacting violently to the image, scraped away the paint covering the demons' faces and genitals, revealing the gold hidden beneath the pictorial layer. This exposed gold created a contradictory result, as if those figures had been involuntarily 'sanctified' by the very material that traditionally served to represent the sacred.
This episode served as the basis for this series of works, in which gold leaf is applied over representations of contemporary demons. The overlapping of temporalities, in reinterpretations of ancient scenes inhabited by current figures, brings into discussion who the agents of violence are in the present day.
Empty Annunciation
This series takes important representations of the Annunciation in art history as a reference, recreating their spaces without the presence of the original characters. Traditionally, the scene of the Annunciation narrates the moment when the angel Gabriel communicates to Mary that she has been chosen to be the mother of the Savior. By suppressing these figures, the works shift attention to the architecture and the elements that visually structure the narrative. The title of the series highlights its central aspect: the absence of the characters does not prevent the annuniciation, but rather highlights how the belief in the existence of a higher power or principle can sustain itself through an imaginary construction.
