Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
Among the media I work with today, painting, performance and installation, the former takes precedence in my production. Each painting reflects my current concerns, which are often the same, but the works express them in different ways. My works are my means of communication with others, and they discuss situations I have experienced or am experiencing, or situations faced by the black population in urban daily life.
The paintings often feature denunciations of racism, police violence and mortality rates among the poor black population in Brazil. But one day I thought that, besides denouncing, I should also try to put an end to it, and thus this cry came to me: JÁ BASTA! So I started juxtaposing these different media, overlapping various types of fabric, building these kinds of war banners—and it must be war, because 111 shots fired by the police at a car with five young blacks is a state of war, 80 shots fired by the police at a car transporting a family is also a state of war.
The harsh look on the face of the people I paint in this series shows they are clearly fighting against the facts in the newspaper headline collages I place at the edges of the paintings.
My use of the hashtag (#) represents a dialogue with social networking sites, which nowadays are a great tool for denunciation and information. Advertising campaigns use # to sell products, political campaigns use # to get votes, I use #JÁBASTA!, the title of the painting produced for the 21st Biennial, to spread the idea that these scenarios must come to an end.