Rosana Paulino
Rosana Paulino is a multimedia artist from Brazil who specialises in free graphics. She investigates social, ethnic and gender issues, focusing on the position of the Afro-Brazilian woman and the slave trade with Africans in Brazil, which lasted until 1888. Paulino brings the past and present together to reveal forms of racism and sexism and open them up for discussion. She draws, paints, embroiders and uses photos to process memories and thoughts into new representations.
In 2010, she saw photos of a Black woman viewed from the front, back and side in a Brazilian natural history book: relics of an outdated, biased form of science that aimed to prove the superiority of certain races to justify exploitation and exclusion. Since then, representations of flora and fauna have appeared in Paulino’s work. She investigates and works with images found on postcards or in books that have to do with national interpretations of exoticism. In her drawings, including Attempt to Create Wings, from the Sketchbook of Flying Possibilities (Real or Imaginary) or Sketchbook of Winged Figures (ca. 2000), you see women symbolically pupating and metamorphosising like butterflies, in search of connection with the place they call home.
Exhibited works:
A geometria à brasileira chega ao paraíso tropical, 2022
A geometria à brasileira chega ao paraíso tropical, 2022
Attempt to Create Wings, from the Sketchbook of Flying Possibilities (Real or Imaginary) or Sketchbook of Winged Figures, ca. 2000
Attempt to Create Wings, from the Sketchbook of Flying Possibilities (Real or Imaginary) or Sketchbook of Winged Figures, ca. 2000
Attempt to Create Wings, from the Sketchbook of Flying Possibilities (Real or Imaginary) or Sketchbook of Winged Figures, ca. 2000
Untitled, ca. 2000
Courtesy Rosana Paulino and Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Brussels, Paris, New York