NaTUREZa uRBaNa
BANK OF BRAZIL CULTURAL CENTER Brasilia —
August 20 to October 20, 2024
In urban society, the street is a space for playing and learning. The urban environment is only alive and lived when it informs and affects us. It is a place of conversation, dedicated to the exchange of words, messages, and signals, where speech and words become ‘wild’ and, escaping rules and institutions, inscribe themselves on walls, turning the city into art for the eyes. Urban art emerges to share stories, to question, and to democratize cities. It impacts people, creates meaning, and serves as a medium of communication instrumental to the dialogue between worldviews.
Check out the exhibition catalog here
– Sponsorship: Banco do Brasil
Curated by Mila Kotka and Nina Coimbra
The climate chaos of the world and the fatigue of planetary production and occupation forms urge us to develop a new language of urban art: Urban Nature, with the potential to elevate awareness and perception of our surroundings, as a powerful reminder of the existence of the natural world and our impact on it. The social and environmental connections created by engaged street art reflect the world around us and our experiences within it. This language is a statement to the world, a counterculture to the homogeneous urban society. Urban Nature highlights the urban environment and emphasizes its role in human activity, in modes of non-human existence, and in the very survival of and within cities, offering a glimpse of what “could be” — our idea of utopia.
By raising public awareness about the importance of nature and promoting reflection on the relationship between humans, non-humans, and the environment, urban art engages with the primordial elements. It visually transforms the city and is an agent of social transformation, awakening ecological consciousness and advocacy for environmental preservation. We need to reflect (and act!) on our role — whether constructive or destructive — regarding life on this planet.
Nina Coimbra, curator
aRTISTS
Adriane Kariú [DF]:
An artist from the Kariú-Kariri people [CE], born in Gama [DF]. Her artistic research explores the body’s experience under metaphysical and dreamlike realms, focusing on living things. She also addresses themes like generationality, identity, archives, and ancestral futurism.
André Morbeck [GO]:
A visual artist and painter from Goias. He graduated in Visual Arts from UFG and has been creating paintings on paper, boards, canvases, and murals for 15 years. His visual repertoire is rich with symbolism and ancestral references, featuring elements that transition from figurative to abstract.
Bazinato [Belarus]:
A practitioner of art as hypnosis and an advocate of “dark ecology,” he creates art not just for humans but also for non-humans, promoting a non anthropocentric understanding of the world. In addition to natural elements, he incorporates waste generated by other artistic productions, like plastic, paper, and cans, as materials for his works.
Daiara Tukano [DF]:
An indigenous artist from the Tukano people who brings the ancestral philosophy of living in harmony with nature to the table, and delves into sacred knowledge about the universe.
Dante Horoiwa [SP]:
A Japanese-Brazilian artist who explores the mystical spiritual connection between humans and nature in his work. He draws on dreams and the human subconscious as foundational elements.
ECHO [Belarus]:
A duo of Belarusian sculptors who create giant bamboo sculptures that integrate with the space, inviting visitors to become part of the artwork and feel a connection with the environment.
Mateus Dutra [GO]:
A visual artist from Goiania who explores the relationship between drawing and painting, incorporating forms inspired by the unique aesthetics of the Cerrado in the Central Plateau. His work is distinguished by the distinctive cuts of graffiti and the subtlety of meticulous gestures achieved with tools like brushes, pencils, and spray.
Mila Kotka [Belarus]:
A Belarusian artist who is one of the project creators. She creates bio-hieroglyphs using elements of native flora to convey nature’s secrets through various contemporary media, including photography, video art, and virtual reality. She employs hybrid media to seek balance between different artistic methods, ethics and aesthetics, as well as spiritual practices and science.
Nina Coimbra [DF]:
Nina is an artist born in Brasilia and co-curator of the project. Working at the intersection of design and art, she creates objects that convey simple human ideas and sensations while experimenting with organic materials, forms, signs, and universal symbols. Raw materials like clay and straw are used to represent symbols such as the snake, adding a special touch to the multiverse of Urban Nature.
Onio [DF]:
A pioneer of urban art in the Federal District. His work features organic pipelines, urban agglomerations, and impossible machinery that make up the tangled graphic nature of his creations. These elements originate from an obsessive painting or drawing process that is usually free and spontaneous, like nature itself.
Ramon Martins [SP]:
An urban artist known for his monumental works who practices art directly in the environment. He highlights elements of nature that are disappearing from cities and teaches about harmonious coexistence with them.
Thiago Alvim [MG]:
An urban artist from Belo Horizonte who incorporates natural roots into his graffiti designs, exploring the integration between the urban environment and nature. In this project, he explores plant life from seed to death, including its practical use in cities and the life cycle of plants within the artwork.
Thiago Toes [SP]:
An artist from São Paulo who visualizes the cosmos in his works. He invites viewers to expand their vision and understand the vastness of the universe by means of the visual poetry of the dialectic between the micro and the macro, the classic and the contemporary.
MuRETa
Four artists, two from Brasília and two from Goiás, show us how to create harmony from chaos, to articulate different worldviews, and to dream of a new shared future for the Cerrado. This wall tells a pictorial, poetic story, illustrating the primordial Big Bang and the creation of life on Earth, always in transformation, like Urban Nature itself.
Onio [DF]
Untitled, 2024
Water-based paint and spray
50 x 2,20 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Adriane Kariú [DF]
Cerratinga, 2024
Water-based paint and paste-up
50 x 2,20 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Mateus Dutra [GO]
Araraçu, 2024
Water-based paint and spray
50 x 2,20 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
André Morbeck [GO]
Waste, 2024
Water-based paint
53 x 2,20 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
REvIvING THROUGH NaTURE
Biosculpture
“Intuitively, we can understand the existence of a natural flow of energy that feeds all life: the flow of water, the sap in plants, the blood in our veins. This natural flow can revitalize, heal, and even bring back to life the dry shores of our consciousness. This art object is an allegory of this vital flow of life that, by embracing this building, fills the urban space with harmony.”
– ECHO
ECHO [Belarus]
Reliving through nature
Bamboo on a metal structure
22 x 15,50 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
11:11
Mural Gallery 1
“Surpassing the building in its physicality, while establishing a deep connection with the sky, reflecting the verticality and transcendence of the cosmos. This work captures a feeling of expansion, a feeling of something that rises and connects with the Infinite.”
– Thiago Toes
Thiago Toes [SP]
11:11, 2024
Bamboo on a metal structure
22 x 15,50 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
PaMURI PIRÕ
Mural Teatro
“Pamuri Pirõ”, meaning “the snake of transformation”, is one of the many names of this mythic “canoe snake”. On her body she carries all of humanity, its medicines, its knowledge of the world, crossing the ocean’s and river’s waters and through the air.”
– Daiara Tukano
Daiara Tukano [DF]
Pamuri Pirõ, 2024
Water-based paint and spray on wood
90 x 2,75 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
TREES
“Trees are sensitive life forms. They interact with us and with the small beings that live on them or pass through them, such as birds and ants. These artistic interventions aim to help people see trees as beings similar to us, with sensitivity and even thoughts, demanding the same respect and consideration that we give to our own feelings and relationships.”
– Bazinato
Bazinato [Belarus]
Decorated Biomass, 2024
Installation on Erythina Velutina tree with paint extracted from abandoned termite mounds
1 tree
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Bazinato [Belarus]
Mimicry/Homo sapiens, 2024
Installation created on a tree with lichens, plaster, clay, and palm waste
2 trees
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
PaVILION DE vIDRO
The works of Urban Nature have no beginning or end; there is no boundary between them, and when taken together, they are one. There is no division between visitors, artworks, and nature— it is all f lux and reflux, endless cycles. Reflecting on art, nature, or design are, after all, reflections on the same primordial origin. The balance we seek can be seen as artificial — and indeed it is — but it is more than that. It is an invitation to each individual to act upon their microcosm, upon their environment, in a vain attempt to generate meaning, even though the great meaning of everything seems to dwell beyond human understanding.
Our paintings, sculptures (large and small), and artistic interventions in general undergo metamorphoses over the weeks, adapting at different moments. Their contours display distinct forms, understood as paths of cycles that open and close. Just like the plants in our garden, the artists, the cities, and the works at the beginning of the exhibition are different from what we present at the end, enticing curiosity and expectation among the public.
Thiago Toes [SP]
Lost Home, Home Never Found, 2024
Acrylic paint and spray on molded drywall
5,50 x 6 x 5,50 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
The Glass Pavilion in Brasília’s Banco do Brasil Cultural Center has become the Temple of Urban Nature envisioned by the Vulica movement, essentially its home. The home, a small cosmos, is our first universe, and because it is the first, it is “arché,” our primordial origin. Where “arché” means origin, where “cosmos” means universe, it also means “logos,” a concept that interconnects with the other two meanings. However, the house (“oikos”, which in the future develops into “eco”) is one of the first forms of the body (“soma”), a place of memory, mystery, nourishment, and dreams.
Our home-temple, like everything in Nature, changes, transforms, and grows (even rocks!). Among living beings, all species undergo transformations and metamorphoses. Time imposes traces of its presence on us — the thread of continuity of something that deviates, bends, grows, cuts, camouflages, and is never the same. The pavilion transforms into a sanctuary where all human and non-human beings, different expressions of life, meditate, connect, disconnect, link, and reconnect in harmony.
Ramon Martins [SP]
Pre-Pangaea, 2024
Water-based paint and spray on MDF boards, columns, ceiling and installation with Cabaças
500 m2
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Thiago Toes [SP]
Sleeping in the rain, 2023
Oil on canvas
70 x 90 cm
Persephone’s gift, 2024
Oil and spray on canvas
30 x 40 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
ECHO [Belarus]
Nest, 2024
Bamboo on a metal structure
4,20 x 3,55 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Mila Kotka [Belarus]
Persephone’s gift, 2024
Leaves and flowers of the cerrado (Cerrado grass, Assa Peixe, Brasileirinha, Passarinho herb, Lemon balm, Macela or Achyrocline satureioides, among others)
2,75 x 2,75 x 0,80 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Bazinato [Belarus]
I hear a new and uncharted world, 2024
Installation. Plastic bottles, plastic bags, paper, diploma thesis, cardboard, adhesive tape, household trash, rusty metal trash, dry tree branches, lianas, lichens, dry leaves, live insects, stones, threads, seeds of various plants, urubu feathers, acrylic markers, acrylic paint, artificial fur, plasticine, gypsum, clay, sand
2,30 x 2,30 x 2,30 m
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Nina Coimbra [DF]
Snake 3, 2024
Buriti fiber
210 x 15 x 3 cm
Fabricação Juao de Fibra
Prism in Rammed Earth, 2024
Rammed earth
64 x 58,24 x 57,16 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
GaLLERY 1
DANTE HOROIWA
“Poroiwa” (Poro-iwa[k]) is the origin of the name Horoiwa, meaning “Great Mountain” or “Sacred Mountain”, where the “Kamuis” (Gods) dwell. Transported to dreamlike landscapes, Dante paints portals to imagined scenes with a high degree of symbolism.
In these Sublime works, the connection between narratives and the Divine is direct, as it accepts all things (phenomena, animals, plants) as manifestations of divinities. Dante Horoiwa portrays his personal journey through distant lands and universes, which we only visit when we travel the path inwards to one’s self.
Made without sketching, his paintings channel only what’s intelligible to the spirit. Layer upon layer, until the images emerge. In silence, in a deep and personal search, we see traces of identity and, through it, try to understand the past. Being a self-taught farmer, the artist feels the passage of time, through the observation of nature’s cycles and his close relationship with the environment, while expressing in his canvases the meaning of life and death.
Dante Horoiwa [SP]
Elemental force (Inner tree), 2016
Diptych, acrylic and oil on canvas
180 x 220 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Dante Horoiwa [SP]
Open Body, 2018
Acrylic on canvas
122 x 330 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
THIAGO ALVIM
The city’s ruins record traces of the human presence. Streets, walls, billboards and urban centers are the territory through which Thiago Alvim moves, taking an interest in the etchings of time on matter. Different themes echo through his canvases – in response to what connects us, we find threads, ropes, cords, roots, and vines. Exploring our origins, we are answered: the cosmology of seeds, wombs, drops, and cocoons. The inevitable end encroaches, representing nature’s inspiration and eventual exhalation.
Based on an original reading of the Baroque, Alvim goes further, in a spiral of patterns that no longer fit into monuments and spill over the city walls, always reiterating the primordial archetype of the circle.
The artist from Minas Gerais finds a way to sculpt time in wooden cuts. From perfectly straight plates, collected from market boxes, rhizomatic and tentacular forms refer to biological circulatory systems, which remind us of urban roots and ducts. The boxes, stained by juice, tell the story of fruits of trees and the material used in their construction. The cosmos presents itself as a great Ouroborus, recalling the constant and infinite dance of life and death.
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Thiago Alvim [MG]
Seed 1 to 6, 2024
Acrylic on canvas
20 x 20 cm
Thiago Alvim [MG]
ReGrow I, 2024
Wood Installation
1270 x 190 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
MILA KOTKA
Belarusian artist Mila Kotka leaves her ancestral territory and takes refuge in the Cerrado, to gather in this biome the symbols of a journey towards her own future. Like an antenna for her people and her generation, through the lenses of the intrinsic human nature Kotka collects and composes natural hieroglyphs, her own symbols. In her exile in “Planalto Central”, the need to rescue elements of her Slavic people emerges, while forging a sense of belonging through universal symbols.
Passing through various landscapes, her rite dances immersed in nature, for kilometers inwards. Leaves, flowers, twigs, seeds, all sorts of colors and textures from each place are used to document the creation that eventually leads to photographs over black cloth.
Thunderstom, 2021
Turmas Island, Braslaw Lakes, Belarus
Hybrid media
35 x 35 cm
10 km of dreams água mineral, 2021
Água Mineral, Federal District, Brazil
Hybrid media
35 x 35 cm
We see portals of Kotka’s profound encounter with the history of symbolism itself. If the entire cosmos is a potential symbol, Mila goes through places and special moments in her poetic journey that, when forming crowns, returns to the elemental circle in its vital entirety.
Her bio-hieroglyphics, from the depths of the earth and its fruits, seek to uncover isolated hiding places, communicating with the environment. The local element passes through it and reconnects through endemic plants. In her wanderings through the landscapes of the world, she tries to decipher secret messages confided to her by nature. Through deep contemplation, reading each hieroglyph becomes a way of approaching the collective unconscious, an exercise in transcendental meditation.
Mila Kotka [Belarus]
Crowns of the Goddesses of the Cerrado, 2024
5 crowns, Ø 28 cm, made from Cerrado plants.
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
BAZINATO
Every day since birth, I have been touching, observing, studying, listening to, and interacting with a vast number of living and non-living systems. I have chosen two tools for exploring the world: art and biology. Biology has taught me to view the world as processes of global interaction on both micro and macro levels, with patterns and connections. This has given me an understanding of diversity and the constant change and interaction occurring around us. Art has provided me with a language to describe, record, and express my research and experiences in various forms. I am fascinated by the impermanence and variability of perception. The essence is that it is the differences that createthe most intriguing outcomes when they interact with each other. Engaging with the new, the strange, and the other creates previously unseen worlds. I am interested in many environments and processes occurring on our planet and beyond. But today, I want to introduce you to something I love deeply. I invite you to explore the world of artistic practices in the forest, which transform my consciousness and become a means for creating a new future, open to the different.
The forest, as a proto-environment, a substrate without beginning or end, without rules or laws, plastic and changeable, is a source of myth-making and mysteries, and an open space for experimentation. I am Bazinato, an artist and researcher, and we are beginning our journey together.
Bazinato [Belarus]
Immersion/Chronicle, 2024
Video art of 6.56 (loop)
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
MATEUS DUTRA, ANDRÉ MORBECK, ECHO AND RAMON MARTINS
This selection of work illustrates various artistic expressions concerning the dialogue amongst nature’s forces. Small totems, archaeological artifacts from the future, emerge from the Earth. From the mythical feminine to botanical abstraction, we see how, in the face of the challenges of coexistence, it illustrates the uncertain boundaries between the human, the organic, and the inorganic.
More than any romantic or mythological philosophy, his work revives the fundamental dimensions of a type of existence that, as the poet said, “exaggerates and excludes nothing.” The time has come to create a rift, tear down walls, and erase the boundaries that separate people, cities, and ecosystems from our true Urban Nature.
Ramon Martins [SP]
Background Arapuca, 2024
Spray and water-based enamel on wood
185 x 275 cm
TIPIA, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
60 x 80 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
Mateus Dutra [GO]
Aió, 2022
Mixed media on canvas
180 x 150 cm
Wuirá, 2022
Mixed media on canvas
178 x 145 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
André Morbeck [GO]
Indoor Garden, 2022
Mixed media on canvas
155 x 150 cm
Rudiment, 2022
Mixed media on canvas
125 x 150 cm
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
ECHO [Belarus]
The Birth of Ideas, 2024
Clay
10 ECHO sculptures’ models
Photo Jean Peixoto, Estúdio 7um13
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