Mãe Preta participates with six prints of the series Ways of Seeing in the exhibition Le Brésil Illustré, at the Maison de l’Amérique Latine, from April 29 to October 2, 2025. See information here.
The exhibition is curated by Jacques Leenhardt and Gabriela Longman, with contemporary artworks that reinterpret the legacy of Jean-Baptiste Debret (1768-1848), a French painter who documented life in Brazil, especially Rio de Janeiro, in the early 19th century.
Debret’s images of colonial life in Rio are very well known in Brazil, but are paradoxically not so well known in France or elsewhere. Debret created a book of prints about Brazil called Voyage Pittoresque dans le Brésil in 1835, designed for European audiences, but the book never took off in terms of sales and was eventually forgotten. Until a relative discovered this work in the early 20th century, these virtually unknown images started to circulate in Brazil, and were eventually acquired by Brazilian collectors. These images have since formed the imagination of colonial Brazil for Brazilians, and with this exhibition, the intent is to make this work better known to French and European audiences.
In the exhibition, several Brazilian contemporary artists from different generations present works that interpret Debret’s legacy, and the colonial world he depicted, in a contemporary light, showing the complexity of this ouevre and what it means to the Brazilian imagination as we today reexamine this legacy in light of decoloniality and discourses of social and visual justice. Mãe Preta participates with works that brings the representation of motherhood in Debret’s work to the foreground.