The Four Hundred: Brazil Hosts A New Generation Of Fashion Photographers
Hoa SP Arte Viewing Room
Brazil has always hosted a sizeable artistic scene alive with color, and the newest generation of young Brazilian creatives are not letting that reputation die.
The virtual world continues on gloomily for others but teeming with opportunity and exposure for Brazil’s photographers, models, and visual artists.
“It is about experiencing things, people, interacting … I am very media-led, and I believe that communication is also one of my most beautiful ways of making art. Even though I think that people don’t grasp much that it is art, but it is. It has a process, narrative, aesthetic experience, me and the whole world. It can only be art.” visual artist Igi Lola Ayedun said.
Ayedun is one of the most considerable talents emerging out of Brazil’s young artistry; at only 25 years old, she is the fashion director of the independent arts magazine, U+MAG and is the founder of an arts organization dedicated to Latin American contemporary art.
Her objective is to boost the platforms of other emerging artists along with the LGBTQ+ community through galleries and media exposure to dispel the “idea that Latin-American art has this bourgeois colonized complex of being always late into Euro/North-American aesthetics,” as stated on HOA Tour’s website.
“I often perceive a whole young and Brazilian art scene needing more calm to develop their own work sustainably, without excluding the financial needs of our class and the digital sphere can be a great ally,” Ayedun told SP-ARTE 365 when discussing the potential of HOA Art’s visual gallery.
In December 2020, HOA Tour hosted a 3-day virtual exhibition streamed from the São Paulo Cultural Centre, which invited 11 rising, queer artists and collectives to showcase their artistic way of expression.
The exhibition was called “CURACAO,” a combination of the Portuguese words ‘cura’ meaning healing and ‘acao’ meaning action, which represented the theme of each piece bringing about the meaningful energy of change amongst the young population.
“CURACAO” curators Paula Garcia, Caroline Ricca Lee, and Monique Lemos told i-D in an interview, “The Brazilian art scene is predominately white and is the result of a system of colonial practices and ‘values’ embedded in the fabric of Brazilian society.”
The inclusion of artists from every ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and background in the exhibition were representative of the cultural shift to a decolonized Brazilian contemporary art space, the curators explained, and how it is pertinent for young, eccentric artists to stand up to long-held structures that don’t allow them to express themselves.
Fashion photography duo Marcos Florentino and Kelvin Yule, who go by the name of “Mar+Vin,” found each other at a fashion event in 2016 and have been since redefining the boundaries of their art and garnering many accolades for it.
With inspiration from their cultural roots of the northeast region of Brazil, they blend vibrant color palettes and local references with modernism and minimalism, challenging Euro-centric styles and expectations that were formed through colonized Brazil.
The pair have been commissioned for GQ, Elle, Levi’s, and Vogue, which comes as no surprise upon one scroll through their impressive portfolio on Instagram.
“We are so much more than the cliché of booty, beach, and samba. We are a country of continental dimensions, vast in culture and customs that for a long time have been neglected. Our people have many beauties and many faces, and our role is to show them to the world in the most sensitive and responsible way we can,” Yule told Creative Review in an interview.
Yule explained that more than half of Brazil’s population is people of color, yet there has not been much light shed on Black Brazilian models, which he and Florentino are determined to change.
The head-turning photography features beautiful, young models of color, with each image telling a different story and new details emerging each time you look at it.
Their impressive set design and structure truly shone like in the case of Brazilian model Camila Simões, who dressed in a silver foil dress posed in front of a photography umbrella that double as her afro. This portrayal is just one of their plenty stunning pieces that toss around fashion with a cultural statement.
“We end up playing a very important social role for future generations, especially in terms of racial inclusion in fashion here. Creating new possibilities for those who never saw or felt represented anywhere. A gay couple of Northeastern Brazilians shooting for the biggest names in Brazilian fashion is really an event, and we are fully aware of this,” Florentine and Yule told Metal Magazine.
And there are many young photographers following suit, dismantling societal and economic expectations of their generation through art, design, and fashion.
Ivan Erick Menezes, a 32-year-old photographer from Belém, Pará, embraces the natural features of his models capturing unique and fascinating images full of color.
Helen Salomão, 26-year-old creative from Salvador, Bahia, takes us up close and personal with details from her childhood and hometown that speak volume and color.
Both of these photographers have snagged commissions in major Brazil publications, and they, along with their other creative peers are continuing to diversify the fashion photography scene and the way other countries view Brazil’s spot in the art world.