Untitled, from the News from the Americas series, 2012 - Paulo Nazareth

Paulo Nazareth's work draws on language, ideas, actions and objects in order to establish or reveal the bonds that exist between people and their surroundings. His subjects are often related to race, ideology and the unequal distribution of development and are underpinned throughout by a categorical vision of ethical life itself — one which puts in relief the affective ties that connect individual life with collective life, this moment with the next, the particular with the universal. In a practice that is both interdisciplinary and participatory, Nazareth embodies the idea of the artist as a sort of connector, a performative decoder or a kind of philosopher.

Throughout Nazareth's work, simple but strong gestures are used to evoke historical memory as well as highlighting social and economic tensions and class struggle—tensions especially apparent to him in Brazil and, more widely, in South America. Nazareth frequently blends notions of social justice and resistance with a dose of the absurd—underscoring the pitfalls awaiting those who believe in progress as a mechanical process versus a holistic one.Read Less