Rosana Paulino’s work centres around social, ethnic, and gender issues, focusing in particular on black women in Brazilian society and the various types of violence suffered by this population due to racism and the lasting legacy of slavery. Paulino explores the impact of memory on psychosocial constructions, introducing different references that intersect the artist’s personal history with the phenomenological history of Brazil, as it was constructed in the past and still persists today. Her research includes the construction of myths—not only as aesthetical pillars but also as psychic influence-makers. Paulino—whose artistic output is unquestionably fundamental to Brazilian art—has produced a practice of reconstructing images and, beyond that, reconstructing memory and its mythologies. Her body of brings together female figures and their respective historical elements, supported by psychic traces that map colonial structures and their impact onto the social and aesthetic fabric of our time.
Read MoreRosana Paulino (São Paulo, 1967) lives and works in São Paulo.
Her works have featured in the following recent exhibitions: Beyond the Black Atlantic, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover (2020); 22nd Sydney Biennial, Sydney (2020); 21º Bienal Sesc Videobrasil, Sesc 24 de Maio, São Paulo (2019); Paraíso Tropical, The Frank Museum of Art, Otterbein University, Ohio (2019); Rosana Paulino: A Costura da Memória, Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro (2019); BÚFALA, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2019); Rosana Paulino – A costura da memória, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Assentamento, Clifford Art Gallery, Colgate University, New York (2018); Atlântico Vermelho, Padrão dos Descobrimentos, Lisbon, Portugal (2017); South: Let Me Begin Again, Goodman Gallery Cape Town, South Africa (2017); Territórios: Artistas afrodescendentes no acervo da Pinacoteca, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Mulheres Negras – Obscure Beuaté Du Brésil, Espace Culturel Fort Griffon À Besançon, Besançon, France (2014).
Text courtesy Mendes Wood DM.
