SOLANGE PESSOA: Of Day or Night

Solange Pessoa channels an enchanted vision of the natural world, creating paintings, installations, and sculptures deeply rooted in the landscapes of south-eastern Brazil—where she lives—as well as in humanity’s earliest visual languages. She consistently incorporates organic, mineral, and unconventional materials into her art, including feathers, seeds, stones, wool, bones, hair, and earth, alongside bronze, clay, and found objects. By pairing enduring substances such as stone with ephemeral organic matter, Pessoa produces works that resonate like archaeological relics while honouring nature’s cycles of growth, decay, and transformation.

Pessoa´s first exhibition in Spain, will present a comprehensive overview of her artistic practice, spanning sculpture, drawing, ceramics, installations, and film. Conceived in close dialogue with the architecture and light of Centro Botín’s gallery spaces, the show will illuminate her engagement with prehistoric and ancestral symbols, as well as her inventive use of both organic and unconventional materials.

As part of Fundación Botín´s Artistic Support programme, each major exhibition at Centro Botín is accompanied by an Art Workshop organised by Fundación Botín and led by the exhibiting artist for a group of selected artists and creative practitioners. These immersive, residency-style sessions foster a communal environment for living, thinking, writing, and creating under the guidance of the host artist.  Since 1993, Pessoa has taught at the Escola Guignard at the Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais (UEMG), contributing significantly to Brazil’s artistic and academic communities. Over 2026, Pessoa will direct a Fundación Botín Art Workshop, encouraging a group of participants selected via an open call to engage in collaboration and creative exchange.

Curator: Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz