Intersecting her trajectory—rooted in the connections between art, identity, and ethics—with the biographies of Senegalese artists and thinkers, the Rio-born artist Panmela Castro presents the outcomes of this cycle of production and encounters at the Centro Cultural Inclusartiz. The exhibition is the result of a four-week artistic residency at Black Rock Senegal, founded by the North American artist Kehinde Wiley (internationally recognized for his portraits and, in turn, the subject of one of Panmela’s paintings). The experience materialized into a series of canvases that reveal the vibrant intelligentsia of contemporary Dakar, crossing the sea to recount their stories and to build a relationship of equity—one negotiated between the gaze of the portrayed and that of the viewer.
The view of the Atlantic waters surrounding the physical space of the residency’s studio establishes a complex relationship with us—one laden with pain and violenc —that finds in Senegalese territory one of its most poignant symbols: Gorée Island, a departure point for the enslavement of Africans bound for the Americas. Although Panmela’s practice—connecting Brazil to its colonial history—is interwoven with living threads of open wounds, her work is constructed upon the understanding of Sankofa: the act of returning to the past in order to reinterpret the present and build the future. This historical entanglement can be felt in each gesture embedded in these canvases.
In the pictorial intensity of her works, there is a movement in the formation of the image that focuses on facial features—a process that, in the artist’s own words, seeks to confer dignity to the other. This decision led her to title each painting with the full name of the portrayed subject as an affirmative gesture. Each sitter poses for Panmela wearing only their own garments, grounding them within their culture and historical moment. Given that the representation of Black people in Brazilian art history has long been marked by visual and symbolic constructions that aimed to depict them merely as laboring bodies—often through a false ideal of valorization that attempts to erase what Ana Maria Gonçalves once called a “defect of color” the work of contemporary artists engaged in the antiracist struggle seeks to free these bodies to exist in full integrity and freedom. To sustain their existence: that is the reason why the backgrounds and surrounding objects in Panmela’s paintings seem to dissolve. The force emanating from these bodies sweeps across the scene, leaving behind traces of color, incipient sketches, or even the raw surface of the canvas.
Although the portrait genre has historically erased subjugated peoples in favor of a canonical elite, Panmela Castro’s work not only rescues and rewrites silenced narratives but also establishes new ones through relationships of profound intimacy. It is within this intimacy that the viewer is invited to participate, guided by the artist’s quick and expressive brushstrokes that animate the gaze of her subjects. In dignified, sometimes serene poses, these figures inscribe themselves into history, carrying the memory of their ancestors—of those who returned and those who remained. This is the power—if not reparative, at least consoling—of the crossing undertaken by the artist.
— Lucas Albuquerque (Curator)
