Sharing the poem’s title and set of beliefs, this exhibition features hands in each of its corners, both physically and poetically. They appear in Barbalho’s sculptures and wall paintings, and as gestures in Lisbôa’s practice. They are the force that hung the works and the tools that wrote this text. Hands were key throughout the various steps leading up to the exhibition itself, whether as protagonists or supporting acts. For this show that celebrates the collaboration between two artists and the many, many hands that enable an idea to take shape.
A poet and artist, Barbalho envelopes the gallery with a site-specific installation of hands that occupy most of the walls. Rather than painting them, the artist paints their negative space in yellow and leaves the hands themselves wall-white, thus mixing notions of inside and outside, foreground and background. Adding to these crossovers, artworks are hung in dynamic ways across the white and yellow surfaces. Barbalho has been invested in creating wall paintings for several years now, and the walls of his last solo show at Elizabeth Xi Bauer (Chants, 2025) featured large colourful fingers pacing the space. In Hand in Hand, he further exhibits a group of new sculptures featuring forearms with their fingers intertwined, in a display of deep affection. Each of the two holding arms has a unique painting, nodding to the idea of solidarity amongst different communities. Barbalho also exhibits large-scale compositions made in his signature style of drawing, where he uses various media – such as oil paint, acrylic paint, coloured pencil, permanent marker, ballpoint pen and resin – to create mesmerising visual cacophonies that are also chromatic wonders. Noteworthy, each of these works has at least one hand among them. Last but not least, the artist exhibits smaller dune drawings that are part of a larger ongoing series he has been creating for a few years now. What is more, the undulation that characterises these works nod to Lidia Lisbôa’s signature aesthetic of repetition and accumulation.
Hand in Hand concludes an artistic residency that Lisbôa undertook at the gallery’s studio over the past two months. During this period, she created various works on paper, clay and fabric, informed by her experience of the city. The artist expanded on her celebrated termite mounds series, using both terracotta and white earthenware, noting that the texture and malleability of the raw material here is different to the one that she sources in Brazil. This, in turn, has caused her work to move in a different tempo, through different gestures, levelling the pressure of her fingers with the resistance of the material.
Lisbôa has also developed her practice with textiles, creating two majestic new works from her ongoing Teats that Fed the World series. One of these crochet sculptures is displayed on the wall, whereas the other hangs from the ceiling, allowing gravity to play different roles in establishing their final shape. The ceiling work, intensely red, is reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois’ famous spiders – a series that is aptly called Maman – thus adding an eerie layer to the maternal analogy of nurturing. Elsewhere in the show, Lisbôa displays an umbilical cord, and drawings made by the repetition of the same chain-like pattern. These are monochromatic compositions painted in various colours that visually and conceptually bind together her crocheting and sculpting processes.
This is a collaboration between two artists whose creative journeys emerged outside traditional art education and the cultural capitals typically associated with contemporary art. They have both chosen to live in São Paulo at different stages of their lives, where they met and planted the seed of this exhibition. This is a dialogue between Lisbôa and Barbalho who know, as Drummond de Andrade did, that, ‘Time is my material, the present time, the present men / The present life’. Two artists and many, many hands.
Mãos Dadas
Não serei o poeta de um mundo caduco
Também não cantarei o mundo futuro
Estou preso à vida e olho meus companheiros
Estão taciturnos mas nutrem grandes esperanças
Entre eles, considero a enorme realidade
O presente é tão grande, não nos afastemos
Não nos afastemos muito, vamos de mãos dadas
Não serei o cantor de uma mulher, de uma história
Não direi os suspiros ao anoitecer, a paisagem vista da janela
Não distribuirei entorpecentes ou cartas de suicida
Não fugirei para as ilhas nem serei raptado por serafins
O tempo é a minha matéria, o tempo presente, os homens presentes
A vida presente
Hand in Hand
I will not be the poet of a decaying world
Nor will I sing of the future world
I am tied to life and I look at my companions
They are silent but nurture great hopes
Among them, I consider the enormous reality
The present is so vast, let’s not drift apart
Let’s not drift too far, let’s go hand in hand
I will not be the singer of a woman, of a story
I will not speak of sighs at dusk, of the landscape seen from the window
I will not distribute narcotics or suicide notes
I will not flee to the islands nor be abducted by seraphim
Time is my material, the present time, the present men
The present life
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, in Sentimento do Mundo, 1940
Curated by Maria do Carmo M. P. de Pontes
Hand in Hand will run from 26th June to 9th August 2026, Wednesday to Sunday, 12-6 pm, or by appointment
