AFFECTIVE POETICS: ROSANA PAULINO AT MALBA
Rosana Paulino. Amefricana is the most complete exhibition outside Brazil of this artist born in Sao Paulo in 1967. The exhibition at Malba brings together a group of works made during 30 years, between 1994 and 2024, from the perspective that the Atlantic inscribes in the Afro-descendant America.
In her installations, drawings, engravings, embroideries and sculptures, Paulino addresses slavery and the violence of the African diaspora in Brazil as the central axis of her practice, which in addition to being artistic is also pedagogical and militant. As a versatile creator, she explores different techniques, with a special attachment to graphics and drawing. Through specific operations –such as stitching, sewing and the use of the archive, among others–, she critically traverses the history of Brazil, problematizing the ethnic construction of the nation.
Paulino's poetic interventions reinscribe the archives of the African diaspora in South America. They are based on a constant dialogue between personal archives, historical archives, reconceptualizations of Brazilian art, interrogations of the matrixes of Western science –its classification systems, its hypotheses, its ways of ordering the world– and also on an approach to the affections and circumstances of black women in Brazilian and Latin American society.
The exhibition, curated by Andrea Giunta and Igor Simões, proposes a journey to approach these concepts from a complex and deeply affective poetics. It includes five large installations, along with drawings, engravings and a video. It is organized into four major nuclei– “Atlantic Memories,” “The Colonial Structures of Science,” “The Narratives of Brazilian Art,” and “Weavings of Subjectivity”– which are not separate zones, but rather axes of meaning that run through almost all of Paulino's works.
The title Amefricana derives from the concept of “amefricanidad,” coined by Brazilian philosopher, black activist, feminist and sociologist Lélia Gonzalez (1935-1994). “Amefrican” are the individual identities, structured in the collective experience, of those who share cultural ties contrary to colonial domination. The term captures particularities of the figure of black women and highlights their active participation in history, unlike other racist and sexist narratives that diminish or suppress their importance.
Rosana Paulino (São Paulo, Brazil, 1967) holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the School of Communication and Arts of the University of São Paulo - Eca/USP, a specialist in Printmaking from the London Print Studio in England and a degree in Printmaking from Eca/USP. She was a Ford Foundation fellow from 2006 to 2008 and Capes fellow from 2008 to 2011. In 2014 she obtained a residency at the Bellagio Center of the Rockefeller Foundation, Italy, and in 2017 she won the Bravo and ABCA (Brazilian Association of Art Critics) awards in the Contemporary Art category. Her work has been exhibited in important museums such as MAM - Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; UNM - University of New Mexico Art Museum, New Mexico, United States and Museu Afro-Brasil - São Paulo, and at the 59th Venice Art Biennale. Her solo exhibitions include The Time of Things, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2022); The Stitching of Memory, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (2018); Atlântico Vermelho, at Padrão dos Descobrimentos, Lisbon (2017); and Black Women at Espace Culturel Fort Griffon, Besançon, France (2014).
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