Paulo Nazareth: Melee

Published to mark the artist’s first solo US museum show, Paulo Nazareth: Melee presents an engaging and timely look at the artist’s multifarious work. The exhibition, held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami in 2019, explored how Nazareth’s work engages the complex colonial and racial histories of the Americas.

An artist who works across mediums, Nazareth uses performance and sculpture to critique the colonial experience and its afterlives in Brazil and the Americas. His durational performances and installations draw from his joint African and Indigenous heritage to highlight marginalized historical legacies, progressive political figures, non-Western worldviews, and potential methods of nonexploitative living and relating. Nazareth’s work assumes a new poignancy in light of the return of repressive political forces and the racial reckoning that our historical moment demands. This beautifully produced volume offers over one hundred color illustrations in addition to newly commissioned scholarship. Paulo Nazareth: Melee is the first exhaustive catalogue of Nazareth’s work, solidifying his place as one of today’s most important global artists.

Alex Gartenfeld is artistic director at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

Gean Moreno is the director of the Knight Foundation Art + Research Center at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.