Paulo Nimer Pjota b. 1988, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil; lives and works in São Paulo

The starting point of Paulo Nimer Pjota’s works is the nature of collectively originated phenomena. Studying iconographies of shared popular and art-historical authorship, the artist draws from the urban culture that nourished his cultural upbringing and awakening to interpret and express new ways of thinking through overlapping forms. In the way hip-hop and other analogous forms of urban culture remix known forms through sampling, Pjota bridges temporalities, clustering, for example, archetypal counter-cultural elements with Greco-Roman and precolonial societies’ aesthetics. Renderings of plants, isolated words, cartoon figures, tattoos, wayward scrawls, accents from seventeenth-century Dutch and Flemish still lifes, and artifacts from pre-Columbian and Hellenic art float in constellations of suspended forms. The resulting dreamlike compositions conjure mythological atmospheres and ritualistic landscapes united by a cyclical weaving together of plural, rapturous dialogues. The artist’s nearly insomniac practice is determined to unearth what – at the other end of the flux of artistic production – remains embedded in memory while at the margins of official history.

By juxtaposing everyday objects with references from the past, he critiques the inefficiency of hierarchical knowledge systems that separate elite and popular culture. Pjota’s compositions reveal a production of images and symbols, produced, remixed, and circulated, often exposing social inequalities in the process. As curator Mateus Nunes remarks, “To remix history is to rebel against the hegemonic and violent cultural system, defending an inevitable contamination of time, history, and image by the confrontation between symbols, spiritualities, and cultural expressions.”

Paulo Nimer Pjota (b. 1988, São José do Rio Preto, Brazil) lives and works in São Paulo.

The artist’s recent solo exhibitions include Na Boca do Sol, Mendes Wood DM, New York (2024); Do cômico e dotrágico, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2023); Every Empire Breaks Like a Vase, The Power Station, Dallas (2021); Cenas de Casa, Caixa de Pandora, Ivani and Jorge Yunes Collection, São Paulo (2019); Medley, Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo (2018); The history in repeat mode – image, Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2017); The history in repeat mode – symbol, Maureen Paley and Morena di Luna, Hove (2017).

Additionally, his work has been included in institutional group exhibitions such as 38th Panorama de Arte Brasileira: Mil Graus [A Thousand Degrees], Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM-SP) at Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo (MAC USP), São Paulo (2024); La mirada encendida, Fundacion Osde, Buenos Aires (2024); X Pink 101, X Museum, Beijing (2024); Private Passion - New Acquisitions in the Astrup Fearnley Collection, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2019); Trouble in Paradise, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam (2019); Sea of Desire, Fondation Carmignac, Porquerolles (2018); The Marvellous Cacophony, 57th October Salon, Belgrade (2018); O Triângulo Atlântico, 11th Mercosul Biennial, Porto Alegre (2018); Painting |or| Not, The KaviarFactory, Lofoten (2017); Soft Power, Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort (2016); the 19th Sesc_Videobrasil, São Paulo (2015); Here There, Qatar Museums – Al Riwaq, Doha (2015); Imagine Brazil, Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo (2013); DHC/ART Foundation for Contemporary Art, Montreal (2015); 12th Lyon Biennale, Lyon (2013).