Dalton PaulaFesta de Aniversário, 2025

Watercolour on paper

About the artist

is an artist, researcher and educator known for his powerful engagement with Afro-Brazilian traditions. Paula foregrounds the lives of undocumented figures whose contributions to society have been overlooked by working to impart a lasting cultural legacy through the continuation of communities and bodies of wisdom that have been forgotten or hidden over time. Just as the personages he depicts were excised from official narratives or documentation due to their actions in opposition to slavery or other forms of injustice, Paula uses collage, paint, film and photography, as well as the symbols and traditions of studio portraiture, in order to stitch the memory of their existence back into the fabric of history. He also works to elevate and commemorate these portrayals through the use of regal attire, highlights of gold leaf and the aura of reverence usually reserved for subjects of high or noble rank. In addition to his individual and groupings of portrait busts and full-length portraits – created through meticulous archival research and, where necessary, equal parts critical fabulation – Paula has produced vast installations and series in ceramics and textile on the residues and tolls left behind by the human labour used in the tobacco and cotton industries in Brazil and further across the Global South. As further evidence of his uniquely transformative and postcolonial practice, Paula has established his own centre for knowledge transference in the central state of Goiás, not far from his birthplace in the capital of Brasilia. Known as Sertão Negro, this art school, residency, studio, garden and kitchen complex hosts classes, workshops and study groups to explore creativity and the possibilities of the surrounding ecosystem, so mirroring the collective activities of former quilombos, sites of refuge originally formed by African slaves in Diaspora.

About the artist

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