ISE-DA’s Temperature Check initiative debuted in São Paulo with a week-long collectors’ trip organized in partnership with 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair, Latitude Brazil, Cutuca Projetos Culturais, and documented by Carlos Pires and Vitor Gabriel of Black Pipe Entretenimento.

Launched to coincide the opening of the 36th São Paolo Biennial curated this year by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the trip featured visits to studios, collections, institutions, and the Biennial. ISE-DA convened 10 emerging Black collectors, while 1-54 brought established international collectors from multiple backgrounds. While independent from the Biennial, the trip was intentionally aligned with Ndikung’s vision to foreground Afro-diasporic and Indigenous epistemologies. Brazil—home to the largest African diaspora outside the continent—was chosen as the first site for Temperature Check for its profound retention and transformation of African cultural and religious traditions, underscoring the cross-diasporic networks the initiative seeks to illuminate and strengthen. From this itinerary, organizers Adefolakunmi (Fola) Adenugba and Camille Ostermann selected five spaces and five artists in São Paulo that are essential to visit.

FIVE SPACES:

Vilanismo

Founded in 2021, Vilanismo is a collective of Black Brazilian artists reclaiming the term “villain” to challenge systemic marginalization in art and society. Their practice spans performance, installation, and visual art, with works that confront racism, class, and exclusion. By amplifying Black narratives, Vilanismo positions collective creation as a form of resistance and reimagining.

Mitre Gallery

Founded in 2023 by Rodrigo Mitre, Mitre Gallery represents a strong roster of emerging artists including Luana Vitra, Diego Muro, Wallace Pato, and Hariel Revignet. The gallery is recognized for fostering innovative contemporary practices and supporting cross-generational artistic dialogue. Its programming emphasizes experimental approaches and the visibility of artists engaging with questions of identity, urban life, and diasporic culture.

Carmo Johnson Projects

Carmo Johnson Projects has distinguished itself through consistent support of Afro-Brazilian artists and socially engaged practices, despite not being an Afro-Brazilian–owned space. Among its collaborators is Roney George, whose assemblages and installations draw on Afro-Brazilian spirituality and memory, foregrounding narratives of resilience and ancestral presence. The space operates as both a platform for experimentation and a hub for dialogue around contemporary Brazilian art.

Domo Damo

Domo Damo is an independent residency and exhibition space in São Paulo dedicated to fostering collaboration and experimentation across disciplines. Though not Afro-Brazilian–run, the residency has become a vital site for Afro-Brazilian artists such as Oto Ferreira, whose vibrant paintings and drawings blend figuration with abstraction, creating dreamlike worlds where Afro-Brazilian identity and urban life converge. By hosting diverse artists and projects, Domo Damo underscores the role of independent spaces in amplifying emerging voices within Brazil’s contemporary art scene.

01.01

01.01 is a curatorial and artistic platform that spotlights emerging Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous artists through exhibitions, residencies, and collaborative projects. Artists such as Moisés Patrício engage with questions of identity, spirituality, and contemporary politics while fostering cross-cultural dialogue. The platform provides visibility and infrastructure for underrepresented voices within Brazil’s art ecosystem.

FIVE ARTISTS:

Larissa de Souza

Larissa de Souza is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, textiles, and collage to explore memory, ancestry, and the body. Centering the Afro-Brazilian woman within both private and communal spaces, her work reconceptualizes historical narratives and resists the erasure of Black culture. Textured and layered with personal iconography, her works preserve communal memory while evoking both intimacy and collective resilience.

Samuel de Saboia

Samuel de Saboia creates exuberant paintings and performances that bridge Afro-diasporic cosmologies with contemporary expression, celebrating joy, queerness, spirituality, and movement. His vibrant works intertwine personal narrative with broader existential themes such as migration, displacement, and the tensions between life and death or pain and pleasure. Characterized by central figures entangled in energetic layers of pattern and color, his compositions evoke the complexity and interconnectedness of contemporary society.

Lídia Lisboa

Lídia Lisboa’s tactile practice incorporates weaving, ceramics, and installation to reflect on femininity, Afro-Brazilian identity, and spirituality. Transforming everyday materials into organic, layered forms, she brings craft traditions into dialogue with contemporary art. Through her works, Lisboa weaves together landscape, body, and memory as sites of resilience and cultural continuity.

Samara Paiva

Samara Paiva’s paintings explore the politics of race, gender, intimacy, and representation in Brazil. A self-taught painter, she often depicts domestic environments and the Black body, using dark palettes, layered compositions, and low contrast to evoke familiarity and freedom. Her practice foregrounds vulnerability and collective memory, transforming art into a space of dialogue and resistance.

Juliana dos Santos

Juliana dos Santos explores color as a sensitive experience, centering her research on the blue of the Clitoria ternatea flower as a metaphor for impermanence and transformation. Her practice sits at the intersection of art, history, and education, reflecting on how Black artists challenge the limits of representation. Through natural pigments that shift and oxidize over time, her works invite viewers to witness change as a fundamental condition of perception.

Images courtesy of Carlos Pires / Black Pipe Entretenimento
Videos courtesy of Vitor Gabriel / Black Pipe Entretenimento

Black Pipe Entretenimento is an audiovisual production company founded by Black creators from the hood of Guaianazes, in São Paulo’s East Zone. Established in 2016, it produces authentic and powerful content with a unique identity and vision. The company works on projects for brands, cultural institutions, and social organizations, and is a reference in the creative scene of Brazil for valuing Black and grassroots narratives without resorting to stereotypes.