EFRAIN ALMEIDA

The exhibition centers on Almeida’s sculptures, alongside watercolors, oil paintings, and embroidered works. Recurring motifs include human bodies and fragments, garments, self-portraits, and animals native to northeastern Brazil, particularly birds. Detached from the body, articles of clothing become traces of absence, while repeated depictions of the artist introduce a sustained engagement with self-representation. In O Outsider (2017), an embroidered self-portrait appears on a translucent silk shirt, whose transparency and apparent weightlessness reinforce a recurring sense of transience. Throughout the exhibition, religious imagery, bodily experience, and everyday forms remain closely intertwined.

A recurring reference in Almeida’s work is the tradition of ex-votos, devotional offerings associated with healing, gratitude, and the vulnerable body. Their economy of means and directness of expression resonate throughout the exhibition, where motifs of offering, care, and fragility recur across different bodies of work. A similar attention extends to his representations of animals, rendered with close observation and remarkable delicacy while often appearing displaced within the architectural space. Among them, Lázaro (2005), a wooden sculpture of a dog extending its tongue toward the gallery wall, alludes to the biblical figure of Lazarus, the leper and beggar whose wounds were tended only by dogs.

The exhibition unfolds across an additional presentation at casa 29, Sardenberg’s space for special projects.