‘Justice and the Inalienable Rights’ group exhibition at State University of New York at Oswego to include work by Gustavo Nazareno
New York
05 February 2025
Gallery artist Gustavo Nazareno is set to appear alongside artists including Sam Gilliam, Simone Leigh, Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall and Deborah Roberts in an expansive group exhibition at State University of New York at Oswego’s Tyler Art Gallery. Running from 28 January to 27 February 2025, the exhibition features artworks across a range of media selected from the Armand-Paul Family Collection.
Established by Newton and Marcus Paul, the Armand-Paul Family Collection foregrounds work by artists from the Latin and African Diasporas. At the centre of the exhibition is a book written by Langston Hughes and illustrated by Prentiss Taylor. Scottsboro Limited contains four poems and a play about the disturbing story of the Scottsboro Boys — nine Black teenagers who, in 1931, were wrongly imprisoned for a crime that they didn’t commit. In one of the poems, Hughes writes “that Justice is a blind goddess.”
Alongside themes of colonialism and police brutality that define Hughes and Taylor’s book, ‘Justice and the Inalienable Rights’ explores the ways in which Black artists have harnessed their right to self-expression as a political act.
Within this context, Nazareno’s work resonates as a way of canonising religious figures and practices that are familiar to the African diaspora across Latin America, especially in his home country of Brazil. By painting and drawing Orixás, the deities and rituals of Afro-Latin religions including Candomblé, Voodoo and Santería, the artist both records and partakes in a religious and spiritual tradition.
Ultimately, his work can be understood as a way of committing to popular memory an often-overlooked mode of worship and belief that form the cornerstones of many Afro-Latin communities. As Oluwatobiloba Ajayi writes in Frieze, “the Orixás’ portraits convey a preternatural intensity, capturing the sublime in an act of reverence made possible only by a devoted practitioner. It is here that the work distinguishes itself.”
This exhibition follows the announcement of Opera Gallery’s representation of Nazareno and his first exhibition with the gallery in London in October 2024. Two concurrent solo exhibitions of the artist’s work —‘Bará’ and ‘Afro-Latin Baroque’, both running from 6 March to 28 March — will follow, taking place respectively at Opera Gallery Bal Harbour and Opera Gallery Miami.
Nazareno’s work has also been shown at the Pérez Art Museum in Miami, Museum of Modern Art Aloísio Magalhães in Recife and the Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araújo in São Paulo. Bará, the artist’s award-winning monograph, was published in 2023.
