Gabriela Pitanga is a contemporary artist based in
London. Born 1992 in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, Pitanga holds a Bachelor's Degree
in Fashion Promotion and Imaging from the University for the Creative Arts and
has recently graduated with an MFA Fine Arts degree from the Kingston School of
Art.
Gabriela's
practice consists in making paintings as part of a daily ritual. The process
and performance of painting are informed by politics, including black and
intersectional feminism, 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 me as an Afro Latin artist and, in particular, an Afro Latin artist
from a working-class background.
As part of Gabriela's practice,
the act of painting is videoed and displayed alongside the finished painting.
She often uses watercolour, inks, acrylic, and large-scale paper combined with
large body movements to create marks and shapes on the paper that unwittingly
refer to shapes that exist in the real world. She understands the paintings and
the ritual of making them as a form of resistance.