Antropologia do negro I and II

Paulo Nazareth is an Afro-Brazilian artist whose work—which takes the form of installations, writings, paintings, videos, and performances—addresses the themes of immigration, the effects of globalization, colonialism, identity, and issues of race and racialization. Across the Americas and Africa, the artist follows the routes of migration, on foot or by bus, reporting on social tensions and exhuming parts of the collective memory. Nazareth links his life, his Afro-descendant identity, and his artistic production in his interdisciplinary, participatory practice. He lives in Belo Horizonte, starting point of all the journeys that feed into his work; it is this metaphor of identity that the artist dismantles through his creations, which poetically, sometimes with humor and self-mockery, address the social and political issues specific to so-called“Latin” communities.

In the videos Antropologia do negro I and Antropologia do negro II, Paulo Nazareth stacks the skulls of black and northeastern people from Brazil over his face and torso. The artist claims a symbolic burial rite for those unidentified people and opens a channel of communication with ancestral présences to appease the spirits of the unburied bodies of anonymous and unidentified people whose story has been forgotten.

The Pinault Collection first showed this work in 2023 at the Punta della Dogana  in Venice, as part of the exhibition Icones.