Artists

Rosana Paulino, Adriana Varejão

Press release

The curatorial project is titled 'Comigo ninguém pode', a popular Brazilian saying that can be translated to "nobody can handle me" or "nobody can beat me"; the phrase also doubles as the Portuguese name for the Dieffenbachia plant, known in English as dumb cane or leopard lily. The pavilion's title draws on these ambiguities as a metaphor for protection, toxicity, and resilience. The exhibition will explore the intersections in Paulino's and Varejão's practices, in which reflections on colonial wounds, healing, and rewriting history give way to processes of metamorphosis and renewed imagination. Both artists, who are from the same generation, are known for practices that address Brazil's colonial history, its aftereffects in the present day, and the ways in which these histories can be rewritten and reimagined as a means of liberation. Artist statement (Adriana Varejão): "Rosana Paulino's work and mine intersect in the power of colonial wounds, a subject that structures the DNA of our works and runs through our research in a visceral way." Artist statement (Rosana Paulino): "an opportunity to investigate colonial wounds from different female perspectives...proposing a revision of art history by questioning the canon and recovering silenced memories." Curator: Diane Lima.