Miguel Afa: Um céu para caber

A Gentil Carioca is pleased to present Um céu para caber (A sky to fit), Miguel Afa's first solo exhibition in São Paulo. The text accompanying the show is signed by Lorraine Mendes — a critic, curator and researcher who has already followed the artist's career in the group exhibition Dos Brasis (Sesc Belenzinho, 2024), his debut in the city. In this new exhibition, Afa is showing an unprecedented set of paintings that explore the limits and expansions of affection as an aesthetic and political experience. Here, the sky appears as a metaphor for breadth and possibility: a place to welcome, breathe and surrender.

Miguel Afa (b. 1987, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) began his artistic career in 2001 through graffiti in the streets of Complexo do Alemão, where he was born and raised. He later graduated from UFRJ's School of Fine Arts. His work proposes a poetic reconfiguration of the image of the peripheral body, countering the stigmas of marginalization with scenes that evoke affection, care and resistance. Through an enigmatic chromatic palette — which doesn't soften, but thickens the narrative — Afa constructs scenes which, at the same time, reveal the visible and the invisible. In his painting, color is discourse. Fading is not just a technical gesture, but an act of remembrance and positioning.

With a career on the rise, in 2025 the artist will hold the solo exhibition O vento continua, todavia, at Paço Imperial (RJ), and has already taken part in group shows such as Dos Brasis (Sesc Belenzinho/SP and Sesc Quitandinha/RJ), O que te faz olhar para o céu? (Centro Cultural Correios, RJ) and, in 2024, he presented the solo show ENTRA PRA DENTRO at A Gentil Carioca (RJ). His works are part of important collections, such as the Jorge M. Pérez Collection.

In Um céu para caber, each painting is delivered as if offering a dedication — to the painting, to life, and to the stories that appear in it. “Miguel Afa presents a body of work that reflects on the boundaries of what we can call love. If all of us, each and every one, have the right to affection, to contact, and to the subtle emotions that blossom through relationships, then the sky represents something infinite, boundless, fertile with possibilities”, explains Lorraine Mendes.

The exhibition continues on the gallery's upper floor with a selection of unseen works dealing with themes of intimacy and eroticism from a sensitive and critical perspective. Due to the content, this part of the exhibition will have an 18 rating, respecting the guidelines for visits by different audiences.

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