Our September Spring Preview at Slag features art works by three noted Brazilian emerging artists— Leandro Júnior, Lidia Lisbôa and João Trevisan— who will appear later this season in the exhibition O Sertão: The Substance of Earth curated by Simon Watson. The works on view include Lidia Lisbôa’s video performance “Dawn” depicting an mysterious undulating, silkworm-like figure; Leandro Junior’s figurative portrait paintings of Afro-Brazilians from quilombos (communities founded by runaway slaves) silhouetted by a blue sky; and João Trevisan's Intervalo paintings, sensual black abstractions of vertical columns that allude to the artist’s rhythmic meditation walking along railroad tracks.

About Brazil's Sertão 

The exhibition O Sertão draws its themes from Brazil’s rugged and dry interior. Far from the media’s portrayal of Brazil as the limitless pleasures of Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema and Copacabana beach, the Sertão is hundreds of miles inland, a vast interior region punctuated by dusty farms, cattle ranches and mines; a place more akin to west Texas, Oklahoma or Colorado (but without the snow). It's an austere, rugged and dry mountainous landscape peopled by friendly inhabitants whose outsized spirit is unquenched by the clearly difficult economic circumstances of the region. And it’s a region with a deep connection with Brazilian history as this is the place of the original 16th century Portuguese mining operations that were fuelled by countless generations of enslaved Africans.

Spring Preview

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