Orixás: Personal Tales on Portraiture - The Stand-Out Exhibition By Gustavo Nazareno

From 8th October to 9th November 2024 Opera Gallery presents Orixás: Personal Tales on Portraiture, a solo exhibition by São Paulo-based artist Gustavo Nazareno. Curated by Samuele Visentin, this exhibition marks the beginning of Nazareno's exclusive representation with Opera Gallery. Through 16 oil paintings and 25 charcoal drawings, there is a blend of mysticism with the modern, crafting figures that are both ethereal and grounded in cultural heritage. The fusion of influences, from Caravaggio to modern fashion photography, adds a layered depth to the work, making it impossible to ignore the sophistication and intentionality behind each piece.

Gustavo Nazareno in his São Paulo, Brazil studio @ Courtesy of GUSN Studio

Attending Gustavo’s exhibition gave the sensation of stepping into an intimate, spiritual visual dialogue. The elevated depictions go beyond traditional religious narratives, venturing into a realm of the diaspora captured less frequently and incites intrigue around its presence within and extension outside of Brazil. His portrayal of Afro-Latin Brazilian religion, primarily Candomblé and its Orixás- deities deeply rooted in African spirituality, brings a powerful perspective within contemporary Black art. Each subject, adorned in grand dress holds what stands out to me as reverence within the portraiture. 

The exhibition evokes a critical conversation about ancestry and resistance, with Gustavo challenging dominant narratives often associated with spirituality in Western art. He brings to the forefront a dialogue around the spiritual richness that Afro-Latin and African traditions contribute to our understanding of identity. A reminder that our history and complexity of stories are worthy of attention within the wider artistic conversation, commanding the same esteem afforded to other works such as the polytheistic Greco-Roman era or Shinto within Japanese art.

Orixás: Personal Tales on Portraiture is your second exhibition in London; how significant does it feel to have this particular exhibition in London at the moment? 

Gustavo: “It's beautiful because it's syncretic in so many ways. It's an international conversation about exchange of cultures, it talks about the history of a culture in Latin America and for me personally, I feel incredibly grateful to have a platform to talk about my faith and manifest that into something that I love, which is painting. My heart is full of happiness to see my love, my faith on the walls, especially with the devotion that I have for those deities, the Orishas, they are such a powerful force that changed my life. For me, it's not only about the political part of it, but also a personal accomplishment and I get to showcase this to a wider global audience.”

Where have you drawn your inspiration and skill from, being a self-taught artist with such stunning artworks?

Gustavo: “When I talk about faith, it's not solely on the deities itself, but faith in things that I believe in and I love that have somehow saved me from something, that being art. It doesn't necessarily change your life, but it would definitely make it better; I have a testimony of that. I was a teenager in a very small city, very complicated to live, having a mind that was so expanded yet living in such a small place. I developed this way of surviving through knowing art. I started discovering things through introversion of art and fashion. And that came along when I was growing up and creating, involving the political, racial and social senses. The lack of representation had started to get me angry regarding references. So then I discovered my faith later on; they talked about my history, they talked about my family, talked about our history in Brazil, and it was Afro. So I could somehow unite everything and make justice for it. That's basically how everything developed and it was through passion and identity.” 

Samuele, how did you come to work with Gustavo?

Samuele: “I met Gustavo through his works at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021. We met for the first time in person last year during the 1-54 art fair, but I had previously seen his work in Gallery 1957. It was the first show that he had done outside of Brazil and from the get-go, I first saw the Bará series, the one that is downstairs, so the charcoals. And then I saw the paintings, but from moment zero I was very sure that I wanted to work with Gustavo. I always came up in the client’s list of the galleries, so I was there from behind the scenes. Isabelle de La Bruyère was one of my clients and she knows Gustavo very well. When she shifted to Opera from Christies we had a conversation about young artists. I know she loved him, she loved the work. So earlier this year in March I said, ‘What do you think about working with Isabelle and Opera doing a show in London?’ And from there, developed into the show you see here today.”

How important is it to have a great synergy and partnership when representing artists? How do you select which ones that you want to represent?

Samuele: “It's always a balance of give and take. I have my personal tastes, of course and I didn't know I was looking for Gustavo’s work, but when I saw it, I knew it immediately. I always question why I like artists works and also framing it in the wider context of what's going on in the world. I always try to make it considerate of the moment we're living in and the influences that can come through unconsciously to artists. It's a result of a combination of elements that come from outside of the art world and they merge into an aesthetic that is a result of a perceptiveness that is contemporary. The world changes every year, so along does the sensibility with it. So I try to be as flexible as possible in that. With Gustavo, it was almost a way for me to rearrange everything that happened in the last 4 years into a culmination of an end result, an end product. Our references within this project live in the same world. I'm Italian, and I spend the summer going to churches in Italy, both for myself because I love them and also the space of the churches and how you feel when you walk into them. There is something very special about the space itself and we sent each other back and forth pictures of paintings that we saw in churches in Venice especially. We had a very nice conversation about the Venetians and the Venetian painters as references, we both have a passion for the treatment of the artistic subjects and I think it translates very well to Gustavo’s paintings. My priority was to create a space for them to exist as Orishas, as single entities on a wall, but also taken as a whole. I kind of wanted to suck the air out of the walls, where everything had to follow some rhythm, some movement. I wanted them to look like they couldn't have been in any other way in any other position on the wall. Working with Gustavo was very easy I would say, we were very much aligned on the most important aspects.”

And yourself Gustavo; how is it making sure that you've got the right support with showcasing your art? 

Gustavo: “Professionally to be an artist, I think around the world it’s complicated to create art and make money out of it. And this is an important conversation because you need money to develop your project. You need to get paid to have support, the support comes from not only people saying your work is beautiful on the wall, but also selling your work and making sure you're paid. Making sure you have rent paid, you have a studio, you have your supplies, that is support. When you have a space to do your job without unnecessary pressure, without any concern if you owe something to someone, especially being a creative, then I think you have a good platform to work on. You need people that support the whole atmosphere.” 

Very important conversation indeed! You also write fables going into the art. Talk me through that process, because it's a very 360 way of being an artist, having the written part of it and the visual representation. That approach in particular is not something that I hear very commonly with artists using the paint medium. 

Gustavo: “I don't paint from references and it’s to visualize what I need to see, what I need to finish a canvas, especially because my work, it's not abstract, there's a process and there's somewhere that I have to end the painting. This process was born because I remember I had a short time to paint the show, I think I had around 2 months if I'm not mistaken. I didn't have much time to study each painting- I was traveling from Ghana to Brazil and I had been invited to do the solo show in London without much time to paint. My life is very chaotic in that sense. Time for me is something complicated usually, but I was on the plane and I was like, I need to find a way to actually see what I'm going to paint. I know what I'm going to paint, but need direction. So I started writing the exact scene, the smell, the color of the earth, how it was, how it would be, all the atmosphere for the painting. In writing that, I realized that I wrote a fable because that story didn't already exist. And so the writing started as a tool, I don't feel confident enough yet to publish my stories, but because I think they still need some development in terms of people understanding what I'm writing without the painting. So, for this show to make portraiture, I wanted to understand for each painting the temperature, the gaze, the clothing, the feel of the clothing, the smell, if it was cold or not, if the Orisha was angry or not, you know, that kind of detail, the emotion he was feeling, how he was posing, so I could start a painting. Writing comes into my process to guide me through a vision, because as a Virgo myself I need to have everything scripted. Fables are really, really fun, I mean, I love writing. I think of music, I think of the scene, the food. And I get so involved in the thing, so that when I start studying for the painting, I already know what I want and where I need to show. If I put yellow on that, it will look warm. I'm not very good at free-wheeling, I like to have a rule. I'm a rule follower, so I create my own rules for painting. So it's like this, the writing comes as a rule for me, I need to write to paint.”

I love the fashion element that you have incorporated into your works, it adds to the statement that it gives the art and a regality. 

Gustavo: “Fashion for me, it was one of the languages that I've learned to love because I'm not a fashion follower myself. I don't dress thinking about fashion. I wish I did. But I think when it comes to couture, this thing that you have, a piece of clothing that is one of one in the world made for you, for your body, that's regal. And my process with fashion, I sew the dresses that I usually paint. So for me, it's my offering because I'm painting a deity, and I need to make the deity feel regal, especially when you are in ceremonies of Candomblé. You know the deity is there because of the way that you're dressed. If you're dressed in yellow and then your body is all in yellow and you have big opulent gold on your body, you know Oshun is there. If you have green head to toe and you have things that remind you of leaves and you have different shades of green, you know Oshosi is there. So the clothing indicates the deity, it's a human way of respect, so I think that that applies to fashion in general that the way you dress, it imposes who you are. It is important for me, especially creating around deities that have such a connection to human qualities, to have a powerful, regal thing about them.”