PAULO NIMER PJOTA

Early Years

Paulo Nimer Pjota was born in São José do Rio Preto, a country town in São Paulo state. There were no museums or galleries, but he got into hip hop and joined graffiti crews, moving into working with brushes and selling his first painting aged 15. He moved to São Paulo when he was 17 to study art, graduating from the Centro Universitário Belas Artes de São Paulo in 2010 with his BFA. He followed this up with a qualification in art criticism in 2012.

Paulo Nimer Pjota: Artworks

“When I decided to be a painter, I was just trying to understand myself in the world,” Paulo Nimer Pjota said in 2026. The artist is interested in history and mythology—notably the works of the US historian Joseph Campbell—and combines ideas from fables, alchemy and Greco-Roman history with images from modern street and popular culture. He relates his practice to his childhood love of hip hop, “sampling” and “remixing” elements from cultures we believe are disparate and creating artworks that forge new bonds between contrasting ideas and images. “I draw on the relationship between mundane objects and objects that are completely institutionalised. I am very interested in making it all uneven, with no present hierarchy,” he has said.

• The massive tempera, oil and acrylic work Opium poppy verde (2019) featured kissing cherries and a classical vase filled with poppy bulbs alongside flowers and cartoon fairies on a background of various greens. Ocula described it in 2022 as being “like a chaotic scrapbook page created at the height of an opium-affected fugue state”.
• Tibetan Buddhist Citipati—skeletal twinned deities that represent the relationship between life and death—appear in two of Pjota’s paintings from 2023, Mercúrio com cabeça de citipati, medusa e vaso abobodal (Mercury with Citipati Head, Medusa and Abobodal Vessel) and Mercúrio com cabeça de elmo romano, citipati, e cerâmica pré-colombiana (Mercury with Roman Helmet Head, Citipati, and pre-Colombian Pottery).
• Vases and butterflies are recurring elements in Pjota’s work. For example, in 2025’s Fábula, butterflies fall out of the stomach of a god-like figure, while others flit around a vase of flowers. The flowers, butterflies and vases often seem to be in sharper focus than the hazier backgrounds of the paintings.

Paulo Nimer Pjota: Select Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Encantados, South London Gallery, London (2026)
• Na boca do Sol II, François Ghebaly, Los Angeles (2026)
• Os alquimistas estão chegando, Mendes Wood DM, Paris (2025)
• Paulo Nimer Pjota, TheMerode, Brussels (2025)
• A Lua e Eu, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam (2025)
• Na Boca do Sol, Mendes Wood DM, New York City (2024)
• Do cômico e do trágico, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2023)
• Paulo Nimer Pjota, Maureen Paley, London (2022)
• Every Empire Breaks Like a Vase, The Power Station, Dallas (2021)
• Fragmented images, fragmented stories, DEO projects, Chios (2021)
• Cenas de Casa, Caixa de Pandora, Ivani and Jorge Yunes Collection, São Paulo (2019)
• Medley, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018)
• The history in repeat mode—Drama, T293, Rome (2017)
• The history in repeat mode—Image, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2017)
• The history in repeat mode—Symbol, Maureen Paley / Morena di Luna, Hove (2017)
• Synthesis between contradictory ideas and the plurality of the object as image II, Maureen Paley, London (2016) (and touring)
• Sistema Relacional, Temporada de projeto—Paço das Artes São Paulo (2013)
• Paulo Nimer Pjota, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2012)
• 1st Mostra do programa de exposições Centro Cultural São Paulo 2012, Centro Cultural São Paulo (2012)

Select Group Exhibitions

• Soft Ground, Mendes Wood DM, Sāo Paulo and Casa da Cultura da Comporta and Espaço Museológico Museu do Arroz, Comporta (2026)
• Works from the Colección Jumex, Museo Jumex, Mexico City (2025)
• Grace Under Fire, The Shepherd, Detroit (2024)
• True + True, Centro Cultural Veras, São Paulo (2023)
• Machines of Desire, Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong (2022)
• 1981/2021: Arte Contemporânea Brasileira, CCBB, Rio de Janeiro (2021)
• What fruits it bears, Peres Projects, Berlin (2020)
• Trouble in Paradise, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2019)
• Hybrid Topographies, Deutsche Bank, New York City (2018)
• A luz que cela o corpo é a mesma que revela a tela, Caixa Cultural, Rio de Janeiro (2017)
• Soft Power. Arte Brasil, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2016)
• The World is Made of Stories, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2015)
• The First and Last Freedom, MOT International Gallery, London (2014)
• Entre-temps... Brusquement, et ensuite, 12e Biennale de Lyon (2013)
• Invenção de Paisagem, Sim Galeria, Curitiba (2012)
• Sem Título #1, Experiências do Pós-Morte, Galeria Oscar Cruz, São Paulo (2011)
• Causas Naturais, Mini Gallery, Belo Horizonte (2010)
• APE alternative press expo, San Francisco (2009)
• Ilegitimo, Paço das Artes, São Paulo (2008)
• Salão de Artes de São José do Rio Preto, São José do Rio Preto (2007)
• O Novo Muralismo Latino Americano, Galeria Marta Traba, São Paulo (2006)

Further Reading

• Paulo Nimer Pjota’s Instagram
• Paulo Nimer Pjota’s website
• Artist profile page at Mendes Wood DM
• In the studio with Paulo Nimer Pjota (2026)
• 2026 interview in the Guardian

Paulo Nimer Pjota FAQs

Ocula