Work that addresses the construction of painting using the body as the territory of this process. The layers of stacked bodies dialogue with the classical construction of painting, from charcoal to chromatic saturation, passing through a reduced palette.

This work is a series of cotton paper overlays with cut-out X and Y shapes, forming a kind of hole, a void in the middle, where we can subtly see the different colors of the papers and the X and Y shapes blending to compose a new, hybrid form. This work represents recent medical advancements showing different chromosomal variations, which were once seen as anomalies and are now being incorporated into the discourse.

“Terra Afefé” is a microcity built from the memories and childhood drawings of artist Rose Afefé. The work was planned and constructed by the artist in collaboration with the community of Ibicoara. Rescuing local construction aesthetics and techniques (such as adobe, an unbaked clay brick), “Terra Afefé” aims to focus on the interior of Bahia in order to affirm, question, and value the territory and its knowledge.

Situated in the rural area of Ibicoara, Bahia, in the Chapada Diamantina region, Afefé presents itself as a meeting and coexistence place, linking art and life, fostering local perspectives to enhance these knowledges. It ultimately unfolds the poetics of this territory through the production and imaginative fabrication surrounding its making.

Through open calls, the work is activated and inhabited by transient inhabitants, with the coexistence in the activations of the microcity intensifying and enabling the tensioning of social, environmental, racial, and gender issues. To inhabit “Terra Afefé” is to use observation and interaction with nature to guide more vibrant and spontaneous productions of life.

The work was created from a soil sample that preserved various plant species. Using plasticine, I molded the plants, capturing their impressions, and then applied transparent silicone to transform these shapes into a tangible memory, almost like an archive of the earth. A Quercus acutissima leaf was preserved and added to the piece.
The work proposes a reflection on the preservation and extinction of biomes, the slow violence imposed on the earth, imagining a future where, with the disappearance of species, what remains would be only molds to remember their existence. The work parallels historical objects, such as fossils of extinct animals, which are preserved in glass vitrines. The piece invites reflection on what we are losing and what, in the future, we might remember. Or perhaps, what will remain is how nature will remember our own disappearance.

“Our series Cyclopean Locks depicts mythical transgender goddesses in moments of danger and anguish, highlighting the threats this community faces daily in our cisnormative, sexist, racist, and prejudiced society.”

“I believe I started thinking about these bed and bedroom scenes during the confinement, when we spent so much time pouring our bodies into that space; the idea of the bed as an erotic place, almost universal from the perspective of resting the body. – sleeping-f***ing-dying-dreaming-thinking-crying- I began to think of the scenes and images I created with a certain ambiguity (something that interests me greatly when I think of images), in the sense of asking myself whether they were scenes of ‘sleeping or awake?’ And thus, imbue the images with an atmosphere of delirium and intimacy. The shape that resembles a pillowcase is tied to a discovery I made: a skate egg case. Its shape reminded me of a pillow, a cloud, something with a strange size that became a recurring drawing and later unfolded into paintings and objects.”

“This series of works stems from a new research begun at the end of 2024. I began to feel the urge to exhibit my textile works on facades and outdoor areas, something akin to presenting such an intimate gesture for public appreciation. I found in PET ropes this possibility. The result was somewhat surprising to me: the ropes, made of fabric, form knitting—a fabric with a distinct weave from the material it originates from. Later, I decided to embroider the stones. There is something that transcends their material condition, they are transparent, but with points of opacity; they shine and also serve as magnifying lenses; they point to the mystical and spiritual, but they are also what they are. These works provoke many reflections, but as in all my practice, I prefer that those who observe the work draw their own conclusions.”

“Only mystery nourishes life” is part of the “Comitê de Campanha” series (2024), made following our nomination for the PIPA Prize. The “Comitê de Campanha” series consists of 8 works within what the collective of artists calls “makumba graphyka” (graphic gestures with the sense of projection, invention of new imaginations, magical gestures, a graphic gesture that projects into time-space, a scratched point, a cosmography).
Who has the right to invent worlds? What origins of the world do we know? What myths constitute our colonial unconscious? What other worlds already exist among us? Is imagining a world a desire or privilege? The imagination of everything matters. This is a work of imagination, in the wake of gestural fabulation.”

Photography from negatives used for the film “”It’s not difficult for a natural philosopher to simulate a phenomenon.”” The film was commissioned by Pivô and is part of the exhibition “”Universal History of Earthquakes.”” Regarding the film, Fernanda Brenner wrote:
“”[…] At Pivô, the artist replicated the experience proposed by the philosopher in one of his essays on the natural disaster in Lisbon. Ramos used boxes filled with soil constructed according to the following instructions:
‘Now it is time to say something about the causes of earthquakes. It is easy for a natural philosopher to reproduce their manifestations. A person takes twenty-five pounds of iron stuffing, an equal amount of sulfur, mixes it with water, buries this paste a meter and a half deep, and compresses the earth firmly above it. After several hours, a dense vapor is seen rising; the earth shakes, and flames erupt from the ground.’
Taking Kant’s speculation to create a fiction film, Ramos takes the scientific narrative beyond its limits. Today, the ‘natural philosopher’ Kant refers to is closer to an artist than a scientist. The concept behind the experiment does not explain the origins of earthquakes. However, it encompasses the conflict between religion and natural science at a crucial moment in the history of Western thought.
– Fernanda Brenner, 2018″”

QUANDO O SEGUNDO SOL CHEGAR is the title of Janaina Wagner’s new film, to be developed through investigations and experiments during her artistic residency at the Centro Cultural do Cariri (CE), awarded to the artist as the 22nd Sesc_Videobrasil Biennial Prize. The research presents to the public a glimpse of the fallen star, a fleeting glow announcing the arrival of a Second Sun and the change it would herald. In the current reality, where the climate crisis of Capitalocene and Solastalgia (a form of existential suffering caused by environmental changes) operate as imminent harbingers of catastrophe, the arrival of a Segundo Sol touches the anxiety of the future that is so present in contemporary conversations and imaginaries: fear and delirium. Closing Janaina’s research trilogy on the Rodovia Transamazônica, together with Curupira e a máquina do destino (2021, 25’) and Quebrante (2024, 23’), QUANDO O SEGUNDO SOL CHEGAR / UM COMETA NOS TEUS OLHOS presents a glimpse of the fallen star, a fleeting glow announcing the approach of a Second Sun and the change that would be announced by its appearance.

QUANDO O SEGUNDO SOL CHEGAR unfolds as an exercise in imagination to be built within our eyes: a day when the planet’s stones, the remains of fallen comets and meteors, would return to the sky. QUANDO O SEGUNDO SOL CHEGAR / UM COMETA NOS TEUS OLHOS is a free adaptation of Spiral Jetty (Robert Smithson), Autobiografia do Vermelho (Anne Carson), and O Deslumbramento de Lol V. Stein (Marguerite Duras).

The drawings “Anti-terminator” and “Tacho de garapa” served as bases for the development of the project Uma solução prodigiosa para um problema barulhento, a painting commissioned by the 14th Mercosul Biennial. Both drawings reference some of the leaders of the traditional community of Brejo Verde, located in the municipality of Correntina, in Western Bahia. The community is one of several known as Fundos e Fechos de Pasto, recognized for its sustainable ways of life and defense of the Cerrado biome in the region. I visited Brejo Verde in October 2024, staying at Dico’s house — represented, along with Ronaldo, in the drawing “Tacho de garapa” — who took me to meet the people and the surroundings. Once there, I could follow and understand a bit of the daily struggles and mobilizations of its inhabitants. Two fundamental examples of these struggles are resistance to the aggressive incursions of agribusiness and the preservation of the Cerrado and the region’s river waters, which are constantly threatened by the advance of agro-industrial monoculture. This is the context in which the drawing “Anti-terminator” was conceived, where Solange, another resident of the community, is depicted with a machete and an axe in each hand, in a proud pose supported on a bulldozer. At the end of the agricultural machine, there is a robot’s head, taken from the sci-fi franchise The Terminator.

The “Ocos” series follows the artist’s research unfolding from emptiness. In the work, through the exercise of creating imagined voids, emptiness begins to exert an agency in shaping the form – removing emptiness from the subjugation of lack and recognizing it as a space crafted for its own creation.

Chassi em Chamas from the Futuro Fóssil series is a graphite and eraser drawing on paper. The Futuro Fóssil series presents a dialogue between imaginaries of the 19th and 21st centuries about technology, architecture, and paleontology. Through the use of graphite and eraser, the series challenges the Western view of nature, the future, and extractivism in the horizons of the past and the future.

Drawing is intrinsic to my practice and is in constant dialogue with sculpture. It was during the residency at Pivô Salvador in October 2024 that this illustration emerged, stemming from the process of creating a sculpture. Today, titled Self-Portrait (2025), the sculpture in question is part of the exhibition Harvest at the Elizabeth XI Bauer Gallery in London.

Derrame (variação nº1) is a work derived from the piece “Derrame (em três atos)”, a set of fragments in the form of drawings, texts, and collages that, in an aphasic way, reference a shared universe of images, stories, and aquatic, maritime, liquid, or oceanic catastrophes.

In “Queimada”, a dramatic event alters the landscape. Smoke spreads across the sky, evoking sensations of suffocation and impending change—a moment of tension between natural balance and human intervention. This contrast also alludes to Nature’s resilience in the face of adversity: while the fire consumes part of the vegetation, the surrounding green suggests continuity and the possibility of regeneration. Despite the symbolic intensity of the fire, the painting conveys silence. This quietness may evoke a sense of mourning for the destruction, inviting reflection on the relationship between Nature and the events that transform it

Long-duration performance created from a score of personifications of unknown family members in real photographs reenacted as protocols. Reality and fiction collide in the search for veracity, the quest to redeem the amnesia imposed by hegemonic time by channeling identities in transit.
When forgetting maintains silence, embodying such experiences becomes urgent as an act of rebellion for memory. To navigate in search of answers, the body is a vehicle: a compass before the unknown. Family is frontier, body is frontier, community is frontier: existence is fractal.

terra/MÃE Long-duration performance
4 hours

Photo by charlie noir

In the Diplopia series, images are physically disassembled and reassembled with each other. The series began and was first shown in 2022 at the solo exhibition CENA — SINTAXE. The materials used vary from printed tarpaulins, adhesive, printed paper, and watercolor.

“transformada numa cobra, devora para depois devolver ao mundo mais beleza” is a group of three drawings on transmutation. The work is inspired by my aunt Luzia, who possesses the enchantment of snakes. Aunt Luzia was bitten twice and nothing happened. She blessed the snake and blessed herself. She is one of the few people who knows how to bless snakes. It is a craft, a mission that cannot be taught to just anyone, because otherwise, the power weakens.

Fruta Estranha depicts natural forms from the artist’s imagination, envisioning an artificial nature. The acidic colors and shapes reflect a post-natural, synthetic world, yet still tropical.

The work is part of the study on repetition and the creation of an ABCdário through the image.

Made from fragments of maps of Brazil cut from textbooks, the drawings in the Constituição series (2020 – ) invent, dismantle, and recreate territories through the gesture of the hand, which connects them through stains, lines, and empty spaces, mapped in graphic improvisations made by the artist.

The drawings “Anti-terminator” and “Tacho de garapa” served as bases for the development of the project Uma solução prodigiosa para um problema barulhento, a painting commissioned by the 14th Mercosul Biennial. Both drawings reference some of the leaders of the traditional community of Brejo Verde, located in the municipality of Correntina, in Western Bahia. The community is one of several known as Fundos e Fechos de Pasto, recognized for its sustainable ways of life and defense of the Cerrado biome in the region. I visited Brejo Verde in October 2024, staying at Dico’s house — represented, along with Ronaldo, in the drawing “Tacho de garapa” — who took me to meet the people and the surroundings. Once there, I could follow and understand a bit of the daily struggles and mobilizations of its inhabitants. Two fundamental examples of these struggles are resistance to the aggressive incursions of agribusiness and the preservation of the Cerrado and the region’s river waters, which are constantly threatened by the advance of agro-industrial monoculture. This is the context in which the drawing “Anti-terminator” was conceived, where Solange, another resident of the community, is depicted with a machete and an axe in each hand, in a proud pose supported on a bulldozer. At the end of the agricultural machine, there is a robot’s head, taken from the sci-fi franchise The Terminator.

Series inspired by the film Terra em Transe by Glauber Rocha.

Linha de quebra is a drawing series where the line emerges from the very fissure of the structure that sustains it, allowing the image to arise from the rupture between paper and wax.

“This drawing was made following my work Trama (2018) for the 33rd Biennial of São Paulo, when I was reflecting on the infrastructural relationships within an art institution and how to reconfigure them. The piece of unifila tape glued comes from what I used in the installation and serves as a trace of what was presented at the time.”

“The land will be ready for the cycle of cultivation and the protection of seeds.”

“Mais de um bilhão de dias” is a work from the series “Mais de um bilhão.” The entire series is created using natural pigments—mostly earth—on paper. The various samples of these pigments were collected during the artist’s constant walks and drifts, resulting in a broad palette of natural colors.

The phrase was inspired by a statement from philosopher Ailton Krenak and is slightly altered in each piece to provide a new dimension or perspective on the time and space traversed by humanity on Earth.

“Rverse” is the name given to a series of works that refer to the body, specifically to a point of entry (or exit) within it.

A passage from one space to another, from one universe to another.

A point of contact.

The word “Inverse” plays with the observer’s position: am I outside this body, looking at a possible entrance, or am I the body observing the world through this hatch?

Sometimes, I catch myself thinking the world feels like a set seen through the porthole of a submarine—I am the submarine, and my consciousness is the character watching.
Other times, I feel as though I am inside the belly of the world, surrounded by everything else, imagining an outside so vast that it becomes impossible to grasp—a black hole, the origin we all come from.

In 2022, during her residency at East London Printmakers in London, Vanessa da Silva reconnected with printmaking techniques, particularly metal engraving, which she first learned as a teenager at the Oswald de Andrade Institute in São Paulo.

The engravings depict natural forms born from the artist’s imagination, evoking an artificial, almost alien nature that challenges the boundaries between the real and the imaginary.