Guilherme Almeida

Guilherme Almeida practices in the fields of painting, sculpture, and installation, often merging these mediums into a single work. He belongs to a generation of artists who bring everyday objects to the forefront, emphasizing and giving prominence to the history, memories, and life of the Black body, which is typically marginalized in both society and art history. For a realistic approach to his research, the artist focuses on his own body’s experience and space, using photo albums, narratives, and familiar objects, and makes it a point to include real characters to strengthen and promote the lives of Afro-Brazilian people.

In his most well-known series, “Destruição dos Mercados” (Destruction of Markets), the artist mixes various mediums and uses newspapers to depict Black figures smiling, with gold and silver teeth, prominently positioned to overlay and cover much of the information and headlines in the newspapers, where Black people are often featured in subordinate news.

The golden smiles painted by Guilherme represent power because in Brazil, where slavery still persists in new clothes, happiness and smiles are a mighty tool for the black population against racism.

The dense and textured colors, the elementary and flat lines should not mislead with respect to the power of a very contemporary language that is moved by images that are apparently simple and naive, actually able to competently represent a specific sociality and a culture, distant from the Western one, that rejects such homologation emancipating itself from the white world to claim a distinct black identity unequivocally.

Guilherme Almeida began his journey in 2017 through painting workshops at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia, where he started his first painting works. To date, he has participated in major exhibitions in Brazil, such as the traveling show “Carolina Maria de Jesus: Um Brasil para os brasileiros,” “Um defeito de cor,” “Encruzilhadas da Arte Afro-brasileira,” “Carvão,” among other national and international exhibitions. His works are in the collections of the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain and the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Art. In 2020, he participated in an artist residency in Évora, Portugal, and in 2022 he was part of the resident artists’ group in the Pemba-Dos Brasis project. In 2022, he held two solo exhibitions at Galeria Base in São Paulo and Ribot Gallery in Milan. In 2024, the artist received the Marvall Collection Prize during the Bologna art fair and opened two solo exhibitions at Paulo Darzé Galeria and Galeria Base with his latest research “Desfrutar do tambor.”