Website
InstagramThe artist Antonio Obá (B. 1983) lives and works in his hometown of Ceilândia, Brazil. Exhibiting his artwork to the public since 2001, Obá’s established creative oeuvre centers figurative painting and conceived environments that touch on areas of installation, sculpture, and performance. Primarily depicting the Black male body, the artist’s practice is built on the foundation of his native country and its cultural constructs, which leads Obá through questions around his own body, identity, and culture, and that of Brazil as an entity.
Obá’s painted works frequently feature rich colors and detailed landscapes surrounding human subjects, accented with a touch of the surreal, serving as allegories for the artist’s creative musings. Oba’s canvases and paper compositions are often exhibited alongside three-dimensional works dealing with similar subject matter, like hanging sculptures cast from hands, mobiles made of the artist’s smaller figurative works, and other thought-provoking forms made from commonplace objects or visuals.
Under the representation of Mendes Wood DM, Obá’s oeuvre includes multiple solo exhibitions at the gallery’s Brazil and New York locations and solo shows with the likes of Pina Contemporânea in São Paulo (2023), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2022), and X Museum, Beijing in 2022. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions like the 12th Liverpool Biennial in 2023, Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle (2023); MASP, São Paulo (2022); Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town (2022); IMS Paulista, São Paulo (2021); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo (2021); Bourse de Commerce – Pinault Collection, Paris (2021), and more.
