ANDRÉ GRIFFO

The research of André Griffo (b. 1979, Barra Mansa, Brazil) is centered on painting and its historical relationships with the representation of architecture. Far from overtly polemical or propagandistic discourses, his images reflect the many forms of violence that give shape to narratives surrounding the histories of Brazil and its ruins. Griffo’s work is oriented toward a critique of power structures, including the persistence of the effects of the slave-based economy in Brazilian historical formation, as well as the mechanisms of religious institutions in the construction of imaginaries. By appropriating visual repertoires from art history to address contemporary socio-historical issues, Griffo’s spaces ultimately become vehicles for a discourse that understands the juxtaposition of anachronistic objects as a strategy for addressing the endurance of power structures in the formation of present-day Brazil.