JAIME LAURIANO

Drawing from his own experience as a black man, Lauriano addresses the forms of everyday violence that have permeated Brazilian history since its invasion by the Portuguese and has focused, most unjustly, on non-white individuals. In this sense, the artist focuses on the historical traumas of Brazilian culture, understanding their complexities through the agency of images and discourses from the most diverse sources, whether from those considered official, such as communication vehicles and State propaganda; or unofficial ones, like videos of lynchings shared over the internet.

His criticism extends from the macropolitics of the spheres of official power to micropolitics. Lauriano thinks about trauma not only in terms of temporality, but also spatially, using cartography to question colonial territorial disputes and constructions. Another dimension of his work is the connection with ancestral religions of African origin. The artist uses signs and symbols of the rituals of these religions, such as the white pemba, used in the making of his maps. Lauriano understands how the religious sphere was fundamental for the resistance of those that were enslaved and served as a space for maintaining their connection with their ancestral territory.

Jaime Lauriano was born in 1985 in São Paulo, where he lives and works

Text courtesy Galeria Nara Roesler.