In this fourteenth edition of PIPA Prize, there is a total of 73 Participating Artists – of which 61 were nominated for the first time – chosen by the Nominating Committee. As the last two editions, the Prize is focused on a more recent production, being directed to artists who had their first solo or group exhibition no longer than 15 years ago. The Prize’s goal is to be a boost for artists at the beginning of their careers who develop distinguished works.
An important moment of every edition takes place with the creation of pages for each Participating Artist on the Prize’s websites (in English and in Portuguese): all artists participating have their own page, with images of works, texts, videos, information about the trajectory, among other contents. These pages that are being created now, added to the existing ones, constitute a source for research on Brazilian contemporary art, and can be later updated with the submission of more material by the artists, thus always being up to date with the new moments of each one’s production.
In addition to this content, the pages also have a videointerview offered by PIPA and carried out by the Do Rio Filmes production company, a format that allows the artists to present their work to the public in a closer and more personal way. These videos are being gradually added to their pages, as they are finished, and will be announced on the Prize’s platforms as well.
In this post, we present bellow recently created pages and videointerviews with some of the PIPA 2023 Participating Artists:
Bruna Alcantara is a visual artist and journalist. Brazilian, she was born in the city of Jacarezinho, in the northern region of the State of Paraná. After graduating in Journalism in 2010 from PUCPR, she began to work professionally as a visual artist by using her family’s photographic archive as research material, and mainly, by finding in the artistic field the best way to explore the themes of motherhood and the body as a political instrument.
While she was finishing her master’s degree in Portugal, the artist became involved with the local feminist movement, as a woman and an immigrant, a mandatory subject in her work. It is also in street art, through the language of paste-up, which involves image and collage in urban interventions, that Bruna finds one of her main forms of expression. By bringing together the love for storytelling with photography, embroidery, collage, object art, and installation, the artist creates visual works that start from indignation, trauma, and violence and strain the relationship between the public and the private.
Bruna Alcantara has participated in national and international events, such as LambesGoia in Goiania and the Cheap Street Poster Art Festival in Bologna, as well as having had her work in individual and group exhibitions in Curitiba, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), and countries like Portugal, Italy, and Lebanon.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Edgar Kanaykõ Xakriabá is a native of the Xakriabá Indigenous Land, located between the municipalities of São João das Missões and Itacarambi, in the state of Minas Gerais. He is a photographer of the Xakriabá indigenous people, who belong to the second largest indigenous linguistic group in the country, the Macro-Jê of the Jê family, Akwẽ subdivision. Kanaykõ holds a degree in Intercultural Training for Indigenous Educators (Fiei/UFMG) and a Master’s degree in Social (visual) Anthropology from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). His dissertation, “Etnovisão: the indigenous gaze that crosses the lens” (2019), is a discussion on the use of photography by indigenous peoples as an instrument of struggle and resistance and the concept of image, and it is the first carried out by an indigenous researcher in UFMG graduate program. His composition is based on photographic records of his Xakriabá community, other peoples, as well as manifestations of the indigenous movement in the country.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Heberth has always been interested in fine arts and became an artist who puts controversial and social themes of everyday life under discussion. He began his artistic career when he took a course in photography that led him to be invited by Vik Muniz to work as his assistant. The artist develops projects in which he uses the support of tiles, paintings, drawings, banknotes, and dolls to build his own language, always focused on the representation of everyday memories, addressing themes of behavior, thoughts, and acts performed through a culture. Always making something present in everyone’s life, the artist’s idea is to take the spectator into his work through a memory. Sobral often uses his personal Instagram account as a kind of open studio, where it is possible to access part of the research process of his most recent projects, also interpreting the app as an archive where he collects, organizes, and publishes images and information regarding the making of each work. His works have been acquired by the Museu Afro in São Paulo, Brazil; the Museu Chácara do Céu in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Ariana Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; and by private collections in Brazil and Europe.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Maria Vaz is a visual artist and researcher, with a master’s degree in visual arts at EBA/UFMG and a bachelor’s degree in fine arts at UEMG/Guignard. In her works, she deals with the relationship between memory, forgetfulness, and the imaginary, through poetic fabulations, experiments between image and word and the use of public and family archives. She was awarded the XVI Funarte Marc Ferrez Photography Prize, selected for the 10th Diário Contemporâneo de Fotografia Prize and participated in several exhibitions in Brazil and a solo show – “Três Ranchos: más allá del fin del mundo” – in Barcelona.
She is a member of the collectives/platforms Women Photograph and Mulheres Luz and co-founder of the duo Paisagens Móveis, in partnership with Bárbara Lissa, – focusing on themes involving the environment and ecocriticism –, with whom she held the exhibition “When time lasts a ton”, in 2022, part of the solo exhibitions cycle from BDMG Cultural, published, in 2021, the photobook “Três Momentos de um Rio” and was selected for the Pierre Verger National Photography Prize, in the same year.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Denis Rodriguez and Leonardo Remor are artists, curators, and researchers. They reflect on the Art and Nature dyad in projects that focus on rural areas, the land, and the transmission of ancestral knowledge and technologies of popular creators and the Indigenous peoples of Eastern South America. Since August 2020, they have resided in Igatu, Chapada Diamantina, Bahia, where they founded Mirante Xique-Xique, a para-institution that promotes research residencies in different areas: environment, architecture, cuisine, and arts. Through cultural activities, exchanges, and environmental education, the non-governmental, non-profit organization’s mission is to safeguard the region’s architectural and intangible heritage.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Keep an eye on PIPA Prize’s website and social media to check out each week new pages of the Participating Artists, and to watch their videointerviews.