Gabriela Pitanga is a contemporary artist based in London. Born 1992 in Salvador, Bahia Brazil, Pitanga also holds a Bachelor Degree in Fashion Promotion and Imaging from the University for the Creative Arts.
Gabriela makes paintings as part of a daily ritual. The process and performance of painting is informed by her politics including black and intersectional feminism, questions of gender, sexuality and a critique of capitalism. Key to the work is a desire for freedom of expression in relation to what is expected of her as an Afro Latin artist and in particular an Afro Latin artist from a working class background.
She often uses watercolour, inks, acrylic and large scale paper combined with large movements of her body to create marks and shapes on the paper that unwittingly refer to shapes that exist in the real world. Gabriela refers to these marks and forms on paper as a link to her ritualistic and spiritual side that goes back to her ancestry and personal experiences.
The paintings are a release of energy that might be seen as an extension of daily rituals informed by her ancestral roots. Gabriela understands the paintings and the ritual of making them as a form of resistance to the non representation and sexualization of black bodies. The very act of painting is understood as an act of resistance.
“(…) Key to the work is a desire for freedom of expression in relation to what is expected of her as an Afro Latin artist and in particular an Afro Latin artist from a working class background. (…) The very act of painting is understood as an act of resistance.”