A Chronicle of Non-Solitude

The Chronicle of Non-Solitude summarizes Panmela Castro’s trajectory, which has turned toward the confrontation between corporeality, politics, memory, landscapes, Black figures, and dialogue with the art world.

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On one hand, in a new series titled Expurgo, Panmela presents a free reinterpretation of Iberê Camargo’s body of work as a whole, and in particular of the painting Solidão (Solitude). Dated 1994, the painting is especially significant both because of its subject and because it was the artist’s last work, completed before his death. Panmela’s work, in turn, is dated 2026 and belongs to the series Artists in the Studio. In it, Iberê appears seated, holding a study for the painting in his hands. Also noteworthy are a cart carrying paints and brushes, and a wall covered with images suggestive of the original work.

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Allegorically, solitude becomes a theme that runs through the exhibition, while the streaks dripping down the canvas, as though the paint were still fresh, evoke the action of time, which both distances and brings the two artists closer in their creative processes.

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On the other hand, the artist has included a significant group of portraits of Black women from Porto Alegre. The four metal engravings produced in the Foundation’s print studio, using Iberê’s old press, are part of an ongoing series titled Historic Women. They present the life stories of Black protagonists who stood out in the past and across different regions. The nine oil pastel drawings, in turn, portray female figures from the city: some were already known to Panmela, while others became her friends during the preparation of this exhibition. Present and past meet on the exhibition walls.

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In these two segments, a creative dialogue is established with Iberê Camargo’s production, whether in the content of the works or in their formal qualities: the palette of strong colors, the dripping paint, and the expressive incisions.

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The first nucleus of the exhibition, composed of a series of works created at different moments in the artist’s trajectory, is titled Affective Objects. These are works that carry within them many stories, all deposited in a “catharsis box” and later in a suspended fabric “cocoon.” Both devices receive objects or texts left by the public, which are then transformed by the artist into sculptures. In this way, they escape the fleeting experience of passing memory and acquire the solid materiality of bronze.

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In the second group, Expurgo, each work refers to a day in the artist’s life, forming a confessional archive that takes on a looser graphic translation. The colors are striking, the marks expansive, almost free gestures that evoke Iberê’s work while also tracing events, thoughts, and memories of Panmela’s own life.

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However, while for Iberê solitude is a fundamental part of the creative process, in Panmela’s case the relationships she establishes with the people she invites to pose structure the work.

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The third part of the exhibition is made up of three video works. In them, the body of a racialized Black woman emerges as the site where feminist politics is enacted. A body that is therefore also collective.

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A final group is organized precisely around the 13 portraits of women from Porto Alegre. It reconnects with a broader series by the artist, developed through paintings of Black women who are protagonists in national history.

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Yet there is also a fifth element placed at an important corner of the exhibition: the mirror. This object entered the history of art bearing a clear ambiguity: it is at once an instrument of truth and a machine of illusion. In this sense, the graffiti inscribed upon it expresses what the exhibition, in a general way, inspires: “art is the opposite of solitude.” If the act of creating can be solitary, the body of work by this artist, who has already become a visual interpreter of the country, displays the dororidade of Black women as a political gesture and, therefore, as something always collective.

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Lilia K. Moritz Schwarcz

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