The works of this 22-year-old self-taught painter are highly prized by collectors in Brazil and abroad.

And he is not alone: a new wave of young black artists from the favelas or poor suburbs of Rio is beginning to impose themselves in contemporary art fairs and prestigious museums. The most famous of them, Maxwell Alexandre, exhibited at the Palais de Tokyo, in Paris, at the end of 2021.

The universe of Jota's paintings, whose real name is Johny Alexandre Gomes, is the Chapadao favela, where shootings often resonate.

The Brazilian artist walks through an alley in the Chapadao favela on April 13 in Rio de Janeiro © TERCIO TEIXEIRA / AFP

The alley that leads to his modest two-room apartment is not accessible by car: drug traffickers have installed concrete blocks to prevent the entry of police vehicles.

Jota denounces police violence, painting residents carrying a body wrapped in a bloody sheet or officers with pig heads.

"Not a fad"

"These are things that need to be shown," he says.

But he also wants to convey "another look" on the favela, like the charm of "small houses stacked on top of each other" in the middle of coconut trees.

Brazilian artist Jota poses in his studio in Rio de Janeiro, April 6, 2023 © CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

At the age of 16, Jota was helping his uncle, a mason, on construction sites. And it was on cardboard or wooden planks collected on these sites that he made his first works, with cheap acrylic paint.

But everything changed when he posted photos of his works on Instagram: he caught the eye of Margareth Telles, founder of the MT platform Projetos de arte, which provides him with his equipment and a workshop in the city center and manages the sale of his works.

At each annual ArtRio contemporary art fair, Jota's paintings were sold out in a matter of hours. At the last edition, in September, it was necessary to pay at least 15,000 reais (about 2,700 euros) for one of his works.

He was able to buy a house 100 meters from his mother's in Chapadao.

"My life has already improved a lot, but I'm aiming even higher," said the young artist who has already exhibited in Amsterdam in 2021, after winning the Prince Claus Fund prize.

Brazilian artist Jota on a staircase in the Chapadao favela, April 13, 2023 © TERCIO TEIXEIRA / AFP

For Margareth Telles, the emergence of young black artists like Jota is "not a fad", but a "lasting movement", which has as its origin in particular the awareness that followed the case of George Floyd, the African-American killed by a white police officer in May 2020.

Last year, Jota had one of his works exhibited at the Masp Museum in Sao Paulo, alongside a painting by modernist Candido Portinari, one of the most renowned painters in Brazilian history.

Hip hop

Another representative of this new wave, O Bastardo ("the bastard"), has just inaugurated his first solo exhibition at the Rio Museum of Art (MAR).

This 25-year-old painter, who does not wish to reveal his name and has cut his teeth in graffiti, is distinguished in particular by his representations of black personalities such as the couple Jay-Z and Beyoncé, Basquiat or Martin Luther King, on a royal blue background.

Brazilian artist O Bastardo at the venue of his exhibition at the Rio Museum of Art (MAR), March 17, 2023 © CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

Like Jota, he was raised by a single mother (hence his artist name), and was discovered on Instagram, in 2021, by Italian collectors.

"I was in Paris after winning a scholarship to the School of Fine Arts, but I didn't have a penny and I slept on a friend's couch," says the artist, who grew up in Mesquita, a poor suburb north of Rio.

His international fame echoed in Brazil, and he was later represented by major galleries in his country. Today, O Bastardo is struggling to meet the demand: "with all the orders I have received, I have work for at least five years".

This corpulent young man with fine dread locks also paints scenes of everyday life in his neighborhood, but with references that he draws from all directions, sometimes well beyond the borders of Brazil.

Paintings by Brazilian artist O Bastardo being installed for his exhibition at the Rio Museum of Art (MAR), March 17, 2023 © CARL DE SOUZA / AFP

In the "Salon de Tia Nenê", a hair salon, we see for example "a chair where Kanye West sat during a fashion show in Paris and tiles from a destroyed house in Syria" that he had seen in the press.

"Today, the reference for most young black artists in Rio is not Picasso, it's hip hop culture. It is a social revolution, which challenges the canons of art," said Marcelo Campos, chief curator of the MAR.

© 2023 AFP