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:
I am an artist, gardener and educator. I live in Moeda, Minas Gerais. At the center of my interests are the visual arts, music, performance and ecology. I work from materials I played with as a child. I revisit stories of my grandmothers and uncles in the rural environment. For example, we used the dry fruit of the jequitibá to make the orange sucker; today, this fruit appears in my works. Not only the concrete raw material, then, but also many memories and affections were filling this experience, in which all things talk to each other. In my creative processes, I appropriate raw materials spontaneously made available by nature and resize them, in order to reveal the voices that are latent in their structures. Interventions in these materials seek to highlight their organic aspect and are conceived as a collaborative process that I carry out in partnership with nature. The paths of art have always crossed in my life and over time I have come to perceive the actor as a singer, the singer as a gardener, the gardener as a visual artist… This whole was building me up. This whole stimulates me, guides me and makes me exist. I cannot specify exactly when I became an artist who struggles with different languages. It’s something that comes to me from my ancestors. It’s something organic. A little bit of everything, a lot together and mixed.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Allan Weber was born and lives in the 5 Bocas community, in the North region of Rio de Janeiro. His contact with ‘pixação’ and photography, the latter through skateboarding, aroused his interest in art. Since then, he has worked with photography, objects, and installations. In 2021, he took the course “Formação e Deformação” at the School of Visual Arts of Parque Lage and opened the 5 Bocas gallery, a place where he organizes actions in the community. Through the title of his first solo exhibition, the artist states that “There is a whole life you don’t know” (2020) – manifesting, then, his interest in summoning the gaze of the other toward a stratum of society that is as stigmatized as it is neglected.
In May 2020, the photo series “We’re in this together is not a tip”, shot during the coronavirus pandemic when he worked as a delivery boy, was the cover of the Zum #20 magazine. The gap between the experience of his work colleagues and that of the customers of the food delivery services is made explicit in it. In the same year, he self-published the photobook that bears the name of his first solo exhibition. Since then, the series “Dance Day” (2021-2022) and “Dealing Art” (2021-2022) stand out in his production. In both, the artist appropriates elements related to the culture and reality of Rio de Janeiro’s slums and gives them new meanings by creating objects, collages, and compositions that recall the constructive tradition in Brazilian art.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Francisco Barretto is a multimedia artist, creative programmer, teacher and researcher who explores the intersection between artificial intelligence and computational art. He has a degree in Computer Science, a Master’s and a PhD in Art and Technology, with an emphasis on the development of interactive installations and performances that use AI algorithms, including multi-agent systems, genetic algorithms and deep learning techniques such as text-to-image and picture-to-picture.
His work seeks to reveal subtle and relevant aspects of how we represent and perceive ourselves, as well as explore new interfaces to interact with various digital algorithms. Barretto uses technology to research the interconnection between humans and the natural world, and the interaction between the physical and the digital in his works, which include mapped projections, LED panels, interactive floors and immersive environments.
In addition to being a professor and researcher at the Institute of Humanities, Arts and Sciences Prof. Milton Santos from the Federal University of Bahia, where he founded and directs the Interactivity, Computing and New Interfaces Laboratory (ICON Lab), Francisco Barretto was also a member of Medialab at the University of Brasília and founded the collective LATE! (Art and Technology Laboratory).
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Visual artist and audiovisual director who exerts the multidisciplinarity in institutional and urban spaces, as well as film festivals and exhibitions. Recognizing the crossroads of cities, screens and salons as suitable territories to receive other untold black narratives. Making audiovisual installations that show performance videos, photos and films. Developing research on memory using manipulation and fictionalization as a laboratory apparatus that recreates imagery about racialized people, operating through the techniques of photo-performance, self-portrait and various audiovisual works.
Nominated for PIPA Prize 2021, Artistic resident Artlab x Amplify D.A.I (Brazil – Argentina), the artist participated in projects such as “NAVE” Rock In Rio, was invited to the 40th Arte Pará (BR), “A Century of Now” – Itaú Cultural (BR), “Women who changed 200 years” – Caixa Cultural, MUTEK Festival (Argentina and Montreal), selected for the 32nd Exhibition Program of the Centro Cultural São Paulo, International Film Festival Rotterdam, as well as Artistic Director of the “Right to Memory Project”. She has works in the collections of the Amazonian Art Collection of UFPA and the National Museum of Fine Arts.
Manager of Grupo Picolé da Massa – DaVárzea das Artes, member of TROVOA – Association of Black Audiovisual Professionals and Nacional Trovoa.
Visit the artist’s page here.
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA Prize 2023:
Marilia Furman is an artist and educator. Her work intends to shape existing tensions in the modern commodity-producing society, making explicit the abstract – but ostensibly oppressive – structures that regulate social interactions. Exploring conflicting relationships between raw materials or resorting to symbolic operations, the artist diverts and appropriates diverse visual signs, originating from the field of consumption, nationalism or conventionally artistic techniques.
Her solo shows include Heroico, a long-term installation performance held at Publica (São Paulo, 2022) with support from the Moraes-Barbosa Collection; Monstrous (2022), Wrong Position (2019) and Appears, Inverts – and against (2015), released at PSM Gallery (Berlim); the installation VER, at Auroras (São Paulo, 2019), besides solo projects in art fairs. Among the group show, she highlights Contramemória, Theatro Municipal (São Paulo, 2022); No presente, a vida (é) política, Central Galeria (São Paulo, 2020); Construção, Mendes Wood DM (São Paulo, 2020); Deus está solto!, Galeria Jaqueline Martins (São Paulo, 2017); Um Trabalho | Um Texto (São Paulo, 2017); Now/Here, Franz Josefs Kai 3 (Viena, 2016); Rumos Artes Visuais, Itaú Cultural (2012-2013), and others.
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.