Artist Panmela Castro will open the exhibition “Retratos Relatos: Revisiting History” on September 20, 2025, at the cultural space Les Jardiniers, in Montrouge, metropolitan Paris. Curated by Maybel Sulamita, the exhibition is part of the official program of the France-Brazil Season 2025 and brings together 15 new paintings that tell the stories of Black women from Brazil, France, and Senegal who fought for the advancement of women’s rights.
 

Among the figures portrayed are the Brazilian intellectual Lélia González and the writer Carolina Maria de Jesus; the Senegalese filmmaker Safi Faye; and the renowned Francophone singer Josephine Baker, whose journeys are revisited and retold from a contemporary perspective. In this way, the exhibition proposes an exercise in reimagining the narratives about these women.
 

“Retratos Relatos emerged from the stories that women shared with me. I began transforming these stories into portraits, and it became a project that traveled through many places in Brazil. For the France-Brazil Season, we chose women who are no longer alive to tell their stories, because they remain important to be told,” says artist Panmela Castro.
 

The paintings on display are accompanied by biographical accounts providing accessible information about the lives, legacies, and significance of these women. During the exhibition, Panmela will take part in an artist residency at the institution, aimed at engaging with the local community and fostering cultural exchange. The residency will transform the exhibition space into a living studio, where the public can interact with and follow the artist’s creative process. In this residency, Castro plans to develop three new portraits for the exhibition: that of Senegalese computer scientist Rose Dieng-Kuntz; Alice Mathieu-Dubois, the first Black French woman to graduate in Medicine; and Brazilian human rights defender Alessandra Makkeda.
 

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