Carrazeda+Cariri is a project based, until now, on 5 series of painted photo-based portraits of men. Each series was painted by one ‘photopainter” from the North-est region of Brazil, most of them from the Cariri region. The portrayed men, however, have never been to Brazil; they live in a remote part of Portugal, in a village called Carrazeda de Ansiães.

The “photopainting” — a traditional technics in portrature — is about to disappear because of the lack of photographic material in distant areas of Brazil. Even knowing the digital and ‘realistic’ portrait, the simple man from Cariri seems to prefer the ‘derived image’ — colorized, retouched and manipulated — even done through Photoshop, in the lack of the traditional photographic paper. The manually or digitally painted portrait means the ideal representation of the human figure, somewhat the cristalization of a precise and precious moment: the aura of eternity given by the painting’s supremacy over the photograph.

The painting can be made in many ways, from a simple retouching that immitates humble women’s make-up to a painting over the whole photographic surface. However, they are always immortal, popular icons in every house in Cariri, next to the religious icons so adored in the North and Northeast of Brazil.

The choice of the portrayed men carries an ironic aspect. The 18 portraits of each series in Carrazeda+Cariri project were ‘born’ from Internet photos, taken from blogs and websites of the Carrazeda de Ansiães region, in Portugal. There’s a severe lack in women to be wed to the local men, who are mostly poor small farmers and workmen. The women seem to rebel against the humble life, limited to the crops, and leave the village, searching for new perspectives or young candidates to become husbands.

Portraying those 18 men represents crystalizing a unique and terminal situation, or a social disfunction that apparently has no escape, just like the hand-painted photographic portraits in Cariri.

After all, in Cariri every artisan paints the portraits differently, multiplying the aesthetic possibilities in each portrait (and each portrayed man…), turning it into a “singular plural”. It is as if Cariri answered to Carrazeda with a provocation on celibacy, on social disfunction and to the limit situation of the ending of portrait.

Rosângela Rennó, 2009

Corpos Celestes celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Helvetica Concentrated system (developed by the duo in collaboration with Jiří Skála in 2004).
The series was presented in the duo’s solo exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in 2024 as part of the celebrations for their nomination for the Prix Marcel Duchamp.
Each piece in the series writes the name of a star concentrically using the Helvetica Concentrated system, merging text and three-dimensionality.

Three stones carved with rounded carved receptacles emulate mirrors used for astrological observations in pre-Hispanic times. The shapes are filled with water, where floating magnetized needles rest, functioning as compasses that point to the South. It is said that pre-Columbian sages made the stars descend from the sky by reflecting them in water mirrors.

Navigation has used constellations and stars as references for centuries. The invention of the compass is a pivotal milestone in the history of navigation and exploration. Invented in China around the 2nd century BC, they consisted of a magnetized needles placed on floating trays, allowing them to rotate freely, using Earth’s magnetism. Initially, compasses pointed South, as in Chinese tradition, the North was associated with cold and death. In contrast, the South was beautiful and blessed, as warmth and life came from there. When introduced to Europe in the 13th century, the compass was adjusted to point North.

While the sky was a place of philosophical contemplation in ancient times, European mobilizations for territorial domination used this source of knowledge as tools for exercising political power and conquest. The presence of the compass in the installation, pointing South, becomes a marker for the revaluation of pre-colonial customs and knowledge, and a symbol of resilience in a world dominated by the West.

Meia’s practice is grounded in research around landscape painting, its forms, history, and meanings. Meia’s landscapes begin to take shape through the artist’s movements, whether through his travels along the streets or through his circles of affection. Both circuits equip the artist with materials for the elaboration of his paintings. In the street, he identifies, selects, and collects elements with constructive potential; from his affection, he is presented with elements that carry tonic and symbolic qualities.

His compositions, therefore, are based on grids that detach from rationality, order, and neutrality, to develop from contextual subjectivities, the fragmentation of stories, and hybridism. Although his constructions are based on collages of materials with different intrinsic values, his practice includes classic and noble painting techniques and materials, such as encaustic, oil paint, oil stick, and charcoal.

The Islands of Carmela Gross act in the field of drawing in the artist’s production, where two concepts are key:

1- The drawing that outlines, drafts concepts, thinks forms, notes, cut and engenders territories, formulates hypotheses, questions and experiences strategies.

2- The drawing that projects, builds, defines areas, composes, maps, measure distances and order operations for the manufacture and / or production of pieces, in their formal characteristics and in their interaction with the places.

Ribeiro explored, in her work, the contact between materials and their transformations throughout the creative process. The construction of the works involved different stages, where bodies are structured and articulated with one another.
Elements produced in her studio, combined with works created in specialized workshops, create a journey between the ensemble and the autonomy of the elements. In her work, each material carries its original condition and the cultural meanings it acquires.

In his work, Estevan Davi adopts an iconoclastic approach, reinterpreting symbols and representations of ancient civilizations. His methods condense timeless elements linked to art history, re-signifying myths, legends, and beliefs from different cultures and periods.

“(…)Dora also displays a set of cloths she used for years to clean her brushes. Each one, imbued with accidental pictorial qualities and much time spent in the studio, bears the name of a red pigment, a fundamental color in her work.(…)”

– Excerpt taken from the text “Dora’s Labyrinth”, by Gabriel Zimbardi

The works in this series mix hand-made wool, cotton, and palm fiber ropes, intertwined with copper strips. The pieces are based on early computer systems, technologies that, in their initial stages, utilized artisanal and manual techniques in their fabrication.
Weaving practices significantly influenced the origins of information storage in computers, and women played a crucial role in the development of these technologies.
The works aim to subvert notions of the patriarchal origins of knowledge, as well as the universal bias towards the supremacy of Western knowledge, which rejects other forms of understanding and relating to the world, highlighting the influence of textiles on the development of science.

Edgard de Souza’s sculpture is part of a series in cast bronze, developed by the artist since 2000. The silhouette references a mirrored male figure, based on the artist’s own body, at a reduced scale. At first glance, his sculptures suggest continuous movements. Upon closer examination, however, they reveal fragmented actions. The impossible poses evoke both drive and introspection, as well as dismemberment and the fusion of bodies.

By integrating filters, rephotography, projections, and narrative sequences, Claudia Andujar expanded the possibilities of photography in the visual arts. Her work anticipated debates on image and subjectivity, the expansion of photography in the exhibition space, and the relationship between sound and image. More than a documentary photographer, Andujar used photography to question and push the boundaries of the medium itself.

In Plano Atrativo [Attractive Plan], Komatsu articulates relationships between control and force. Barbed wire, a symbol of restriction, and coins, an expression of value and power, form an interdependent structure.
Inspired by geometric tapestries, the artist creates a visually harmonious pattern that, up close, reveals its tension: the allure of money confronts the danger of wire.

Marcelo Cidade draws from the appropriation and disuse of everyday cleaning tools to critique the precarization and consumption of labor and the worker.

The series Tríades by Chiara Banfi explores the intersection between geometry, music, and symbolism, investigating the deep structural connections between harmonic patterns and geometric forms. By examining these relationships, the artist seeks to reveal the correspondences between musical harmony, sacred geometry, and its connection to universal archetypes.

Untitled – Self-Portraits is a continuation of Carlos Motta’s performative self-portraits created in 1998, in which the artist embodied fictitious characters in staged landscapes. In 2025, Motta revisits this archival and period material, intervening in the original contact sheets by removing the backgrounds and isolating only the body in sequence. This gesture reinforces the body as a site of transformation and resistance, deepening the artist’s exploration of sexual alterity and the construction of dissident identities. The series is part of the collections of the Centre Pompidou, Lara Foundation (Singapore), and MoMA, NY.

Tectônicas were produced after years of accumulating materials in Cadu’s studio. The slices revealed countless layers of paint, an artificial topology that brings us closer to geological cycles. Currently, a new block is being formed since the second half of 2020, constituting a system
periodically restarted.

In this series of paintings on concrete, Iván Argote explores the construction and formation of historical and cultural narratives through slogans, artifacts, and monuments. Instead of a history written by the “winners,” Argote presents a collection of reassembled artifacts from an archaeology that prioritizes affection and resistance.

This series by Dora Longo Bahia is based on female spies whose main profession wasn’t “being a spy”. They were public people – actresses, singers, sportswomen, media stars, socialites – who worked undercover to help their countries or their causes.

The portraits are framed on steel frames and presented over old maps from The National Geographic Magazine that show – painted red – the countries involved in the conflicts in which the female spies acted.

Presented over the maps there are also painting of a weapon used at the time of each specific conflict framed in steel and a silkscreen on steel based on a documentary image produced at the time by a war photographer.

In Tentativa de apagar o cotidiano [Attempting to erase the quotidian], artist Marcelo Cidade (1979) establishes a daily practice of painting on local newspapers. The artist seeks to erase the news and images of the periodicals, leaving in evidence geometric traces. Lines of different colors, sizes and shapes emerge, and graphics lose their original function by arranging themselves in new patterns.

In the Conforto series, Edgard de Souza elevates cushions to the status of sculpture. Meticulously handmade by the artist, they are removed from their original context, becoming misaligned or austere. Edgard’s work emerges from a period marked by the fear of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, a context that provokes a clash in his practice between impulses of withdrawal and wildness. This withdrawal manifests in different ways, one of them through a surrealist lens, where life and desire emerge from the comfort of everyday objects. His sculptures explore fundamental human emotions, oscillating between tragedy and ecstasy.

Meia’s practice is grounded in research around landscape painting, its forms, history, and meanings. Meia’s landscapes begin to take shape through the artist’s movements, whether through his travels along the streets or through his circles of affection. Both circuits equip the artist with materials for the elaboration of his paintings. In the street, he identifies, selects, and collects elements with constructive potential; from his affection, he is presented with elements that carry tonic and symbolic qualities.

His compositions, therefore, are based on grids that detach from rationality, order, and neutrality, to develop from contextual subjectivities, the fragmentation of stories, and hybridism. Although his constructions are based on collages of materials with different intrinsic values, his practice includes classic and noble painting techniques and materials, such as encaustic, oil paint, oil stick, and charcoal.

“This series investigates the herbs used by healers, as well as the prayers they say when they bless people. It is at the intersection between object-image-herb and writingprayer-voice that the work sustains the simplicity of popular traditions as fundamental importance to our constitution.”
Andre Vargas