TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary

Jonathas de Andrade

Jonathas de Andrade is a Brazilian visual artist born in 1982 in Maceió, Alagoas. He currently lives and works in Recife, a coastal city in northeastern Brazil known for its rich contrasts between colonial architecture and modernist developments. De Andrade's artistic practice encompasses photography, video, installation, and mixed media, often engaging with local communities to explore themes of memory, identity, labor, and the legacies of colonialism.

His works frequently delve into the contradictions of Brazilian society, particularly focusing on the marginalized and overlooked communities of his home region. By intertwining fiction and documentary, de Andrade creates allegories and poetic approaches that challenge constructs of gender, class, and race rooted in Brazilian socio-cultural paradigms. He often employs strategies that shuffle fiction and reality, collecting and cataloging images, texts, life stories, and materials on architecture to recompose a personal narrative of the past.

De Andrade's commitment to collaborative art-making is evident in his co-founding of "A Casa como Convém" ("The House as It Should Be"), a Recife-based artist collective established in 2007. The collective focuses on issues surrounding tropical modern architecture and offers a counterpoint to the dominant cultural narratives of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

His work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2022), where he represented Brazil with the installation "Com o Coração Saindo Pela Boca" ("With the Heart Coming Out of the Mouth"). Other notable exhibitions include solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2019), New Museum in New York (2017), and The Power Plant in Toronto (2017). His works have also been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

De Andrade's art continues to engage with critical issues of social and cultural identity, questioning how history and memory shape our understanding of the present. Through his diverse practice, he remains a significant voice in contemporary art, not only in Brazil but on the global stage.

Related works in the collection

Jonathas de Andrade
Litoral Pacífico Sulamericano, 2011

Jonathas de Andrade
O Levante, 2013

Jonathas de Andrade
O que sobrou da 1a Corrida de Carroças do Centro do Recife, 2012/2014

Jonathas de Andrade
Olho de furacão, 2022

Jonathas de Andrade
Pacífico, 2010

Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness
August 10–September 29, 2016 | Centro Cultural Metropolitano, Quito, Ecuador

Atopia – Migration, Heritage and Placelessness May 14–October 5, 2014 | MAZ, Guadalajara, Mexico

Atopia – Migration, Heritage and PlacelessnessAugust 16–November 26, 2017 | Museo de ArteContemporáneo, Lima, Peru

Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary: The Commissions Book
Sternberg Press, 2020