TIAGO CARNEIRO DA CUNHA

Repurposing the iconography of B movies, comic books and videomes, the works on view combine the visual vocabulary of animation with Tiago’s ironic sense of humour. The pieces yoke together a dimension of openly playful character and scene design as much as they harbour allegorical meanings, as if we were before a mythical repertoire of cosmic events.

Thus, against an outer space backdrop, the pregnant woman in _Hereditária _(2023), echoing the posture of Michelangelo’s Adam, awakes symbolic associations of fertility, creation, and a primordial edenic state. In _Atlético _(2023), the artist depicts a man holding a ball over his shoulders, like Atlas, that he threatens to throw into a spiral galaxy. At the centre is a tubular plumbing arch, like those transporting water over the polluted Tietê river, situating the composition in the contemporary environment of ecological collapse. In the same piece, Carneiro da Cunha paints his titan with tanlines on his comically rounded buttocks, reminding us that in his practice epic themes are always a step away from comic deflation.