André Vargas is a visual artist, poet, composer and educator. Vargas works on the recovery of his ancestry as a way of understanding the foundations of the linguistic, religious, historical and aesthetic cultures of the “brazilianness” in which he is inserted, with popular culture as the greatest indicator of this foundation. The suburbs, the interiors and other places of personal and collective memory that surround this ancestry are presented as an empirical starting point for his conceptual postulations. Graduating in Philosophy at UFRJ, Vargas questions the hegemonies that indicate a unique story by recounting and responding to his own family history, making use of the religious forces that lead back to the Afrocentricity of his gestures. Voice, evocation and conversation, produce folds on the meanings of his works through the conjugation between word and image. In this way, the constant presence of absence reaffirms the infinite possibilities, where any possibility of certainty about the sacred and the profane escapes through gracefulness.
This residency is supported by FAS – Forward Art Stories and Galeria Vermelho.