Lia D Castro

Lia D Castro’s artistic practice offers an approach to art that goes beyond her own paintings, texts and installations. It encompasses the complexity of society, and seeks to build more meaningful and inclusive narratives and lived experiences that have been overlooked in museums and art galleries. For the past 10 years, Lia D Castro has worked as educator, sex worker, transgender rights activist and gives antiracism and anti-transphobia lectures in art institutions, as well as in national and multinational companies. She also has interests in areas such as hate criminology, anthropology, behavioral psychology and sociology. Full of meanings and resonances, Lia D Castro’s paintings reflect on gender and race hierarchies, art history, transphobia and biased notions of femininity, in works that invite the viewer to examine them closely. A powerful call to action, emphasizing the importance of representation and inclusivity. ...

Founded in São Paulo in 2011, Galeria Jaqueline Martins is a space for research, documentation and presentation of contemporary artistic production. It proposes collaborative curatorial strategies that foster dialogue between different generations and different cultural perspectives. One of its guiding principles is the encouragement of research-oriented conceptualist practices characterized by critical, even subversive, approaches. Since its inauguration, the gallery has developed a special program around the investigation of artistic productions carried out during the Brazilian military period – more specifically from the 1970s and 1980s. It promotes a historical revision of processes grounded on strong intellectual resistance, audacity and commitment to art and which transformed the artistic practice in the country, but nonetheless were neglected throughout the last decades. By integrating research and practice that confront the contemporary scene by means of its exhibition program, the gallery encourages the revival of the debate that conceives of artistic actions as contact zones for the exercise of aesthetic, social and political change. In 2020 the gallery opened its second exhibition space, in Brussels, aiming to expand our presence in Europe and to develop a multidisciplinary program that will foster connections between our artists and Brazilian art practices in an international context. ...