What happens when a country runs out of color?
The exhibition “Dark Brazil” is a series of 12 paintings that were originally exhibited as prints pasted on the walls of Brasília. The originals were part of the “SESC Biennial 2018”, the “Diverse Biennial” in 2019, and the exhibition “22” at the “Lusophone Museum of Sexual Diversity” on the Google Arts & Culture Platform.
They were created between 2015 and 16, in the unstable political scenario that would later give way to the 2016 coup d’état in Brazil, and the first far-right government since the dictatorship of 1968 with Bolsonaro’s rise.
The paintings show the contrast between the cheerful images of the advertising that the artist developed for the government in his daytime job, and the real people on the streets. From these encounters arise these paintings with blurred and monochromatic characters that try to counteract that colorful fantasy that no longer exists except in the advertising imaginary.
