Rosana Paulino's ¿História Natural? Reconsiders Colonial Past

(MENAFN- USA Art News) Artist Rosana Paulino recently discussed her work at the New School's Arnold and Sheila Aronson Galleries on Monday, October 5. This event followed a contested first round in Brazil's presidential election, which proceeded to a runoff. Paulino, the first Afro-Brazilian woman to earn a PhD in visual arts in Brazil, views the nation's colonial history as an active force, particularly noting the violence, both archival and literal, against Black individuals, especially women.

Her solo exhibition,“¿História Natural?,” is presented by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics and remains on view through November 1. The exhibition centers on Paulino's 2016 artist's book of the same title, which earned her the 2025–27 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, accompanied by a $25,000 award. The book combines linocut and drypoint techniques with altered prints of photographs from Louis Agassiz's 1865–66 expedition to Brazil. These elements are collaged and stitched onto paper and fabric. Paulino stated,“This history is dirty,” while reviewing the book's pages.

Paulino, known for her perfectionism, often tears up drawings that do not meet her standards, although her studio assistants now preserve these discards for her archive. Her recent 2024 drawings,“Comigo ninguém pode” (“No one can beat me”), inspired the title for Brazil's pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year, curated by Diane Lima. Paulino explained her approach to her work, stating that she“reads the archive against the people who made it.” She draws on the format of the illustrated naturalist album, a tool used by colonizers.“The book really is a kind of treatise on how Black people, and Brazil itself, have been represented,” Paulino said. She noted that Europeans mapped Brazil through art, initially with traveling painters and later photography, and that Brazil often adopted these external images without critical examination, even in schoolbooks.“These were images made by foreigners for foreigners, which Brazil brought home without any critique,” she emphasized.

Source: Hyperallergic

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