NEW YORK, NY.- Nara Roesler announces the representation of Jaime Lauriano (São Paulo, 1985), one of the great representatives of contemporary Brazilian art. His practice is based on the investigation, appropriation, and displacement of signs and symbols present in visual culture, as a way of highlighting, understanding, and questioning the direction and choices taken and projected by society.
Race is one of the main themes of Lauriano’s work, which he approaches both from a subjective point of view, from his experiences as a black man, and from the supposed objectivity of science, through cartography, history, and archival practices.
In particular, Lauriano focuses on two fundamental periods in Brazilian history: the almost four centuries of slavery and the two decades of civil-military dictatorship, due to the widespread and deeply rooted trauma they caused and which can still be seen in the systemic mechanisms of policing and state violence.
The artist appropriates images, narratives, and official documents, understanding these elements as manifestations of the constitution of national identity by institutions of power. Lauriano conceives an atlas of violence in Brazil, often recreating maps based on navigation charts, articulating the borders and forms of the territory with concepts and images that superimpose various ideas within the same spaces.
Often, his titles allow us to perceive the conceptual terrain arranged by the artist in his propositions, while also highlighting the importance of linguistics in his work. For Lauriano, art is a means of spreading knowledge, like other fields of the human sciences, which differentiates itself through its ability to tell often invisible stories.
His practice, however, is not restricted to the field of visual arts but also permeates other cultural forms. Alongside Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Lilia Schwarcz, he participated in the organization of the Enciclopédia Negra (Companhia das Letras, 2021), a compendium that presents more than four hundred biographies of Afro-Brazilian personalities who, despite having played a decisive role in the constitution of Brazilian culture and society, have been relegated to the background or erased by official historical narratives.
Since the beginning of his career, Lauriano has received great institutional attention. His works are part of important national collections, such as those of the São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP); the Pinacoteca do Estado, in São Paulo; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Niterói (MAC–Niterói), and the Museum of Art of Rio (MAR), in Rio de Janeiro. Currently, works by Lauriano are on view at the exhibitions Histórias Brasileiras, at São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP), and at the 37º Panorama of Brazilian Art, at the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM–SP).
In 2023, Jaime Lauriano will open the gallery’s program by presenting a solo show at Nara Roesler São Paulo, in February. The show is part of a series of three exhibitions that the artist is preparing to commemorate his 15-year-long career.
