Matheus Marques Abu

Matheus Marques Abu (1997), a self-taught artist, develops independent research on ancestry, spirituality, and the African diaspora in Brazil, placing colonial history and its reverberations in the daily lives of racialized people in perspective. He began his work with the language of pixo (graffiti), strongly influenced by the Rio de Janeiro rap scene, and collaborated on the covers for one of rapper BK’s important EPs, Antes dos Gigantes Chegarem vol. 1 and 2. He also assisted renowned artists such as Panmela Castro in the exhibition “Rua!” at the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) and Tomaz Viana, Toz, in the exhibition Cultura Insônia at Caixa Cultural. Painting emerged during the pandemic, and on a trip to Salvador he discovered another set of symbols, the “adinkra.” Brought to Brazil by enslaved people, these ideograms were carved mainly on gates and windows of imperial Brazil by enslaved Black blacksmiths, composing a sophisticated form of communication and resistance to subalternity. To reclaim this language through his works is simultaneously to challenge dominant regimes of visibility and the canon of Eurocentric history (including art history), bringing to light an alternative history invisible to the eyes of the colonial mind.