Antonio Tarsis

Born 1995 in Salvador/Brazil.

Antonio Tarsis is an artist. He uses the city itself as his laboratory and source of inspiration. In the streets of the favelas, he collects all kinds of materials that he combines and recontextualizes, including medicine bottles, revolver bullets, matchboxes, industrial packaging and electrical components. Tarsis seeks to subvert the notion of these materials by transforming them into new compositions, objects, collages, paintings, and installations.

The essence of his work constitutes a critical view of subjects like colonization/decolonization, the black body and the genocide of the black population in Brazil.

In 2016, Tarsis received the »Energias na Arte Award« from the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo/Brazil, which nominated him for the Lugar a Dudas Artist Residency in Cali/Colombia (2017). In 2018, he was selected for the Education and Deformation Program of EAV – Escola de Artes Visuais of Parque Lage, in Rio de Janeiro/Brazil.

His solo exhibitions include Colored Export (2019) at SET Dalston, London/Great Britain; and Symbolic Genocide (2018) at the ArtRio Brasil Contemporary Pavilion in Rio de Janeiro. He has participated in a number of group exhibitions such as Echoes of South Atlantic at the Goethe-Institut in Salvador/Brazil (2018)  – which was also exhibited in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Any Direction Out of the Center, Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro (2018) and Anti-Tropical Fascism, curated by Pablo de La Barra, at the White Cubicle Toilet Gallery, London.