• Rosana Paulino | Inside the Studio
  • Rosana Paulino's work centers around social, ethnic, and gender issues, focusing mainly on black women in Brazilian society and the... Rosana Paulino's work centers around social, ethnic, and gender issues, focusing mainly on black women in Brazilian society and the...
    Rosana Paulino's work centers around social, ethnic, and gender issues, focusing mainly 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 Brazil's phenomenological history, as it was constructed in the past and persists today.
     
    Paulino's 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 work brings together female figures and their respective historical elements, supported by psychic traces that map colonial structures and their impact on our time's social and aesthetic fabric.
  • I’m concerned with the issue of archetypes and of psychology, of a Black female psychology. 
    – Rosana Paulino, 2020
    Since the 1990s, Paulino has explored the historicity of images and 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 – from the perspective of a Black woman and beyond, from a place of non-existence of her own image.
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    Throughout her career, Rosana 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, reflections and outcomes. Working as a drawing teacher for many years, the artist uses the medium of drawing, among others, to offers us a body of work that 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.
  • I also express this disquiet on fabric, a material which allows me to make larger works. 
    When I start to join the pieces, I use black thread, as a sort of suture. I always say I’m not
    sewing I’m suturing because it’s an attempt to join very different parts together using strength,
    which is what happens in Brazil; it’s a metaphor for the country. 
     
    – Rosana Paulino about her Paraiso Tropical and Musa Paradisiaca series. 
  • The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese... The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese...
    The iconographic construction of colonial Brazil is also present in the series of printed fabrics that feature images of Portuguese tiles, faceless women, and banana bunches with plantain's scientific name, Musa Paradisiaca [Paradisiac muse]. Paulino ironically combines the phallic fruit with its female name, producing an aesthetic unfamiliarity sewn into the artist's textile works and outlining a dubious link between image and history. The series also references a famous carnival composition called Yes, nós temos bananas [Yes, we have bananas], pointing the foreign gaze always exoticizing Brazil simultaneously that questions what we have. Same with Paraíso Tropical [Tropical Paradise] series, which explores the violence as a hidden aspect of our history. 
  • I kept wondering where does this supposed – and still argued for – Brazilian vocation for geometric abstraction come from?... I kept wondering where does this supposed – and still argued for – Brazilian vocation for geometric abstraction come from?...
    I kept wondering where does this supposed – and still argued for – Brazilian vocation for geometric abstraction come from? The artists that work with geometry are not looking at geometric forms that already existed here in Brazil, an indigenous geometry that was already present in the country, an African geometry… no, instead, it’s an imported geometry. Therefore, we see that these populations once again are left outside the idea of a nation, once again outside the idea of a country. Whose vocation are we talking about? So I started to introduce these figures that were outside, which in fact are the same recurring ones, as they traverse the country’s history, they remain outside. So we see again and again the image of enslaved people, indigenous people. 
     
    It’s a sort of resistance; the images do not fit the squares, they do not fit the rectangles. It’s as if they didn’t fit the boxes or the moulds that were placed there, they break with the moulds and in the background.
     
    – The artist about Geometria à Brasileira series.
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  • Despite not conforming to Western standards, Paulino has been paving the way for a new generation of Afro-diasporic artists who are increasingly securing a larger space in institutions in Brazil and worldwide. Throughout this journey, we have seen the multiplication of demands for a more diverse field of art. After all, being an artist has traditionally been a symbol of social distinction, a confirmation of certain class, race and gender privileges. 
     
    – Exerpt from Pollyana Quintella published in Continente Magazine, June 2020
  • Rosana 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).