Thiago Martins de Melo

Thiago Martins de Melo was born in 1981 in São Luís do Maranhão, Brazil. He lives and works between São Paulo, São Luís, and Guadalajara, Mexico. A visual artist and trained psychologist, he works across painting, sculpture, installation, and stop-motion animation. His practice is characterized by visually dense compositions and a strong emphasis on the materiality of painting, combining expressionist and realist approaches with historical, mythological, and syncretic imagery. Painting is the point of departure for many of Martins de Melo’s works, which often expand beyond the conventional limits of the canvas into three-dimensional and moving-image forms. His large-scale paintings and objects depict battles, rituals, and epiphanies, incorporating volumes, everyday objects, images of mass circulation, and references to Brazilian history and popular culture. His work frequently addresses questions of land, violence, resistance, and the persistence of historical and symbolic conflicts. A significant development in his practice is the relationship between painting and stop-motion animation. In *Bárbara Balaclava* (2016), his first video work, more than 4,000 paintings and drawings were used to construct a stop-motion animation. The film draws on Tarot imagery and combines mythological, political, and anti-colonial narratives, following the story of an anonymous martyr through episodes of dispossession, violence, death, and reincarnation. The work extends his exploration of painting into movement, sound, and temporal fragmentation. His interest in territory and the histories inscribed within it also emerges in works such as *Bárbara Balaclava* and *Rasga Mortalha* (2019). Both films are constructed from paintings, drawings, and diagrams that are photographed and edited through temporal shifts, fragmentation, and changes of perspective. While *Bárbara Balaclava* addresses the history of dispossession and anti-colonial struggle, *Rasga Mortalha* draws on the legend of the Suindara owl, a figure associated with the folklore of northern and northeastern Brazil, to engage with contemporary social and political questions. Martins de Melo has participated in major exhibitions and international art events, including the 31st São Paulo Biennial in 2014, the 12th Lyon Biennale in 2013, the 12th Dakar Biennale in 2016, and the 10th Mercosur Biennial in 2015. His work has also been presented at institutions and exhibitions including the Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo, the Rubell Family Collection in Miami, MASP in São Paulo, and the 1st Bienal das Amazônias in Belém. In 2014, he was a finalist for the PIPA Prize. His work is held in important institutional and private collections, including the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP), the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary collection in Vienna, the Rubell Museum in Miami, and the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro. MASP holds *Mestizo Madonna of the Mirror* (2015), an oil painting that the museum describes as questioning official narratives of Brazilian history through references to European painting iconography. Across painting, sculpture, installation, and animation, Martins de Melo continues to develop a practice in which material experimentation and historical narrative are closely intertwined. His works bring together images, objects, mythological references, and memories to construct complex narratives around territory, violence, cultural memory, and resistance.