Speaking Truth to Power

2020 to present

Solo show at Oscar Cruz Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil 2012

This series began during my BFA at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro around 2004. The program was highly hands-on, and the theoretical framework did not address the questions I was most interested in, so I turned to my own readings in philosophy and poetry. Wanting to share these ideas beyond the classroom, I began making paintings that presented the work of these authors at a monumental scale, using bright color to draw viewers in.

From the beginning, my goal was to create murals. Public art, however, does not come easily, so I started with paintings, hoping they would eventually move into public space. I was interested in bringing literary works, often obscure, controversial, or dissonant with mainstream consumer culture, into the most public settings possible. Using text also allows viewers to construct their own imagery: I offer ideas, and they complete them through their own internal dialogue.

The first iteration of this series, A Coney Island of the Mind, is a homage to Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Over more than twenty years, the project has evolved into Speaking Truth to Power, focusing on words by women, BIPOC, Latinx, and LGBTQIA thinkers who challenge structures of oppression and domination, from colonialism and patriarchy to advanced capitalism. Each work seeks to preserve and circulate the ideas of writers and thinkers such as bell hooks, Diane Di Prima, Paulo Freire, Hannah Arendt, John Lewis, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Julian Assange, Gore Vidal, Ailton Krenak, and others.