Luiz Zerbini’s Paintings Uncover Previously Unseen Brazilian Histories in São Paulo Show
Shanti Escalante-De Mattei
ArtNews, April 13, 2022
Brazil’s natural abundance is at constant odds with the violence that revolves around it. This perversity is present in all of Zerbini’s work: a loving reflection on the botanical beauty of Brazil’s plantation crops as ghostly slave figures surround them, as in Paisagem inútil (Useless Landscape), 2020, or a plant of mythical proportions amid oily waters at a guerrilla gold mining site in Rio das Mortes (The River of Deaths), 2021. Peppered throughout the exhibition are his prints, made using plants he’s gathered around his home.
As much as Zerbini makes explicit histories of violence, he also deliberately obfuscates them. Out of respect for the bodies of the dead and slaves, they are often hidden or abstracted in some way. In his interpretation of the War of Canudos, for example, he gives us a vision of the community still whole, still full of potential.
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