Intertwining Ferocity Of Feminine And Floral, Night And Day, Rosana Paulino Decodes Colonial Narratives

A nude goddess figure with cropped dark hair and green eyes bends her arms at the elbows and lifts her forearms to extend open palms, indicating her nurturing and protective nature. White lilies sprout from her plump lips and hands, symbolizing purity, rebirth, and innocence, as they frame her form and draw together the natural landscape and the figure. In Brazil, white lilies are popular at weddings and baptisms, as well as for funerals to signify the deceased’s return to a state of innocence. A diurnal bird, vibrant blue with a crimson crown and beak, crowns her head, extends its wings in tandem with the goddess’ open palms, and appears alert and awake in the night.

Viewers are captivated by her formidable presence, filling the monumental canvas which is cropped at her shins. At more than four-feet-tall and over three-feet wide, the life-size goddess commands attention as she gazes to the viewer’s left. Rosana Paulino’s Untitled | Sem títu lo (2025), a graphite, acrylic, and natural pigment on canvas evokes emotion and forces an inquiry into the relationship between the nocturnal and diurnal.

On view through June 14 at Mendes Wood DM in New York’s Tribeca arts neighborhood, Diálogos do Dia e da Noite, a solo exhibition amplifying the far-reaching influence of the Afro-Brazilian contemporary artist, curator, and researcher born 1967, in São Paulo, is a highlight of New York Art Week.

Examining the nuances in social, ethnic, and gender issues, especially the experiences of Black women and the ongoing consequences of racism and slavery in Brazil, Paulino fluidly works across sewing, collage, drawing, video, and installation to deconstruct colonial narratives and reconstruct image and memory. She infuses personal narratives into the sweeping phenomenological history of Brazil, exploring the nature of subjective, conscious experience and how individuals perceive and communicate their lived experience. Paulino uses the term “psychic traces” to describe visual and conceptual markers that manifest the tenacious systems of power, control, and violence, as she maps colonial legacies.

The exhibition welcomes us into diurnal at the street-level, and leads us into the nocturnal in the downstairs galleries. Our mood transforms with the imagery, as we feel the embrace of the visceral figures and depictions that delve deeper into the physical worlds of humans and plants and how those evoke myriad emotions.

While Paulino’s large-scale works appear life sized and can be appreciated from a distance, more intimate works like Untitled | Sem título (2025), a dermatographic pencil and dry pastel on paper triptych demands close inspection. The two outer canvases depict downward-facing white lilies against the black background, framing the central goddess figure, drawing vines toward her heart center. While most lily species emerge from tall, upright stems and grow directly from bulbs, the Easter lily vine (Beaumontia grandiflora), produces a fragrant white lily-like flower. Paulino’s latest body of work presents an otherworldly perspective into the natural environment. We may wonder, what do plants do at night? While they lack the complex neurological function needed to dream, their circadian rhythm can be imagined as an ethereal state.

In Diálogos do Dia e da Noite, Paulino revisits archetypes, female bastions, goddesses or guides encountered in her ongoing series Senhora das Plantas (Lady of Plants) series, evolving with limbs burgeoning into tree roots, hair flourishing as leaves, or fingers blooming into flowers. Her figures stand, crawl, or kneel, as if searching tirelessly for deeper meaning in darkness. Many of her smaller works behave like diaries we might stumble upon in a nightstand, inviting an innermost dialogue.

For those inclined to explore outdoors, Paulino’s large-scale mural, The Creation of the Creatures of Day and Night (2024), is concurrently on view at New York’s High Line and will be displayed until the end of the year.

As you traverse the seemingly endless array of art on display throughout New York, seek out Mendes Wood DM’s debut at Frieze New York, with a major presentation of Japanese sculptor and installation artist Kishio Suga, who will be celebrated in a solo exhibition, opening July 25 at Dia Beacon. Founded in in São Paulo in 2010 by Felipe Dmab, Matthew Wood, and Pedro Mendes to showcase international and Brazilian artists, Mendes Wood DM now has locations in Brussels, Paris, and Germantown, New York.