Rosana Paulino enquires about Brazil with her work, by considering issues of race, gender and identity within an immense warehouse where people, fauna and flora exist to be explored. In contrast to this story of subjugation, her works promote images of life.
In the watercolours from the Jatobá, Our Lady of the Plants/Iansã Sword and Female Buffalo series, the artist creates images that represent the integration between black women’s body and nature. The Jatobá is an endangered species, but in Paulino’s works it flourishes and grows stronger by taking on a human form, which, in reciprocity, receives the strength of the plant. This exchange is also expressed between the woman and the iansã’s sword, a plant that has the name of one of the deities of the Yoruba pantheon. Iansã is also related to the buffalo, which appears here as a hybrid, irreverent and free being.
