davi de jesus do nascimento Pirapora, b. 1997

davi de jesus do nascimento is a barranqueiro artist — as he self-identifies — born and raised on the banks of the São Francisco River, in northern Minas Gerais, Brazil. His practice unfolds through a careful listening to the territory, the community, and the immaterial forces that shape his experience, using natural, biographical, and symbolic elements as raw material. Coming from a lineage of washerwomen, fishermen, carpenters, and boatmen, davi mobilizes ancestral affections and everyday images to construct a body of work that is at once intimate gesture and collective expression. His work moves across drawing, painting, objects, photography, installations, video, performance, and text, weaving ecological, social, and subjective concerns into compositions that evoke the memories of water, the cycles of the earth, and the rituals of passage. Between dense atmospheres and sentimental landscapes, his work builds a singular visual vocabulary, marked by an earthy palette and formal arrangements that explore tensions between permanence and dissolution, poetry and protest, spirituality and politics.

His solo exhibitions include: mau da língua (2023, Museu Paranaense, Curitiba – Brazil), madeira doce, água áspera(2023, Palácio das Artes, Belo Horizonte – Brazil), and na boca da noite, os muruins (2023, Instituto Carê, São Paulo – Brazil). He has participated in group exhibitions such as: Onde há fumaça: arte e emergência climática (2024, Museu do Ipiranga, São Paulo – Brazil), Vai, vai, Saudade (2024, Museo Madre, Naples – Italy), Imagens que não se conformam(2023, Memorial Minas Gerais Vale, Belo Horizonte – Brazil), Um século de agora (2023, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo – Brazil), Histórias Brasileiras (2022, MASP, São Paulo – Brazil), and the 37º Panorama da Arte Brasileira (2022, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM-SP, São Paulo – Brazil).