Antonio Obá

Critical text

Antonio Obá (b. 1983, Ceilândia) experienced from a very young age the friction between his Catholic upbringing and his African origins. The artist departs from his body and his own personal experience to question the foundations of ‘official’ Brazilian culture and art history, which deliberately erased the production of black and indigenous populations for centuries. Obá’s practice combines performances, paintings, sculptures that often deal with liturgy, and the elements that constitute a ritualistic environment. The section will present a set of outstanding watercolours, recently made when he was in a residency in London, right after his work was heavily censored by religious fundamentalists in his native Brazil. Obá says that water stains are unpredictable, somehow like a fleeting diasporic body that is never entirely here or there, also referring to his own self-exiled body that was still concerned with and aware of his local context.

Text by Fernanda Brenner, Ilaria Gianni