(this page was last updated in June 2023)
Campinas, Brazil, 1993
Lives and works in São Paulo, Brazil
PIPA Prize 2023 nominee
May Agontinmé is an artist, educator, and art historian. Her art research and practice takes the contemporary textiles as a starting point. Agontinmé brings together the crochet technique, learned from her mother, and repair skills, taught by her father, to create the series “Restauros Pretos” [Black Restorations]. In this series, based on interventions using the aforementioned techniques, the artist brings back the black skin of whitened religious symbols, such as Jesus and Iemanjá. By creating images of orixás over the Catholic saints, in two-dimensional and three-dimensional works, she raises questions about syncretism and religious racism.
Website: linktr.ee/agontinme
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA 2023: