CA - genocide products - Round Up y Povo da Mata

Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth draws on his African and Indigenous heritage to perform reparative gestures that aim to revive neglected histories of the Global South and showcase the perpetuation of colonial violence to this day. Drawing on Brazilian art history from the modernist period to the present, his practice explores themes including the trauma resulting from the genocide of Brazilian Indigenous peoples; capitalist and extractivist violence; and the interplay between belonging, displacement, and repair. Through his work, he dismantles the notion of Brazil’s multiculturalism, challenging the idealized narrative of harmonious coexistence among diverse cultures and ethnic groups.

In the series CA - genocide products, Nazareth looks at tragedies that have been omitted from historical narratives and largely forgotten over time. He highlights the erasure from memory of the stories of Indigenous populations that were colonized, enslaved, and ultimately exterminated. His sculptural works highlight brands and logos bearing the names of populations decimated by genocide, emphasizing the perpetuation of their symbolic and epistemic annihilation. Three of these store-bought products are cast into semi-transparent pink resin blocks, in which the names and logos remain visible. The resin blocks are then placed on handcrafted street market stalls, serving as pedestals and presenting these objects as distant, opaque relics that look frozen in a time capsule.

(Text written by TBA21 and used as a wall label for the exhibition "Remedios", C3A, Cordoba, 2023)