Exhibition "Zombie's Head", by Rafael Pereira

The exposure Rafael Pereira: The Zombie Head inaugurates the 2026 programming of Station Gallery, reaffirming the poetic force and growing complexity of the work of the 39-year-old artist from São Paulo. Throughout his career, Rafael has traveled to various states in Brazil, lived for 14 decisive years in Teófilo Otoni (MG), and currently resides in Caraguatatuba, on the north coast of São Paulo.

Since Lapidar Imagens, his first solo exhibition at the gallery in 2023, the artist has gone through a cycle of maturation that has broadened his visual vocabulary by revisiting structuring aspects of his trajectory—from his training as a gemstone cutter to his experiences traveling throughout the country. This journey now unfolds in an exhibition that articulates memory, identity, and subjectivity.

“Since Rafael joined Estação in 2023, we have closely followed his consistent maturation process. He is an artist who has grown in confidence, repertoire, and awareness of his own work. Between 'Lapidar Imagens' and this new solo exhibition, his work has gained depth. The exhibition reflects a real leap in his trajectory. When an artist like him finds an institutional space that supports him, he conquers the world. In his case, our support was fundamental in allowing him to feel freer to take risks, deepen processes, and expand his language,” argues Vilma Eid, founding partner of Galeria Estação.

Produced between 2024 and 2025, the new paintings incorporate a multicolored universe of portraits, landscapes, and symbolic elements that, according to the artist, emerge from a deep listening to himself, in a conscious process of slowing down: “Today I feel that my work happens in a different time. Before, I had a lot of urgency, a need to produce all the time, almost as if I needed to prove something. Now I understand that these processes must be slower, that painting needs time to mature, just like me,” he explains.

Comprising two exhibition sections, the show brings together 22 paintings on the 2nd floor of the Galeria Estação—20 portraits and two still lifes—and presents, on the mezzanine, the Nbimda series, consisting of 16 paintings of heads of varying sizes. Each work represents a deity (nkisi) worshipped in the Bantu-based Angolan Candomblé. In discussing this collection, art historian Renato Menezes, author of the critical text in the exhibition catalog, highlights the symbolic centrality of the head as a link between the body, ancestry, and the divine:

“What appeared to Europeans solely as physiognomy, that is, as an emanation of personality, reveals itself, in Pereira's painting, as a link with the divine: the head, orí for the Yoruba and mutuê for the Bantu. It is in the head where the vital force of the individual resides; there lies their connection with the nkisi, the ancestral energy and individual destiny that each subject brings with them at birth. The theme of the ancestral head organizes the Nbimda series,” Menezes points out.

By exalting and reinterpreting the Afro-diasporic ancestry that constitutes a major part of Brazilian society and cultural formation, Rafael also makes explicit his intention to add greater complexity to discussions about race, moving away from reductionist readings in favor of constructing a Black subjectivity.

“I don’t want my work to be read solely from a racial perspective. I don’t want a smiling Black body to be seen as an event, while a smiling white body is just an image. What interests me is constructing a Black subjectivity that is complex, intimate, and contradictory. I don’t want to deny the racial issue. I want to go beyond it. I want my work to be seen as image and experience, and for Blackness to be there in a profound way, not as a label,” the artist provokes.

According to Menezes, this recent production, marked by the intuitive force of the pictorial gesture, further expands the possible interpretations of Raphael's work, already hinted at in the modernist interpretation of the works present in Lapidar Imagens.

“At first glance, his work seems to result directly from the absorption of these codes of traditional portraiture in order to imagine futures, reconstruct histories, and invent identities, overcoming the way in which Black life has been evaluated. On the other hand, the artist creates physiognomies from his imagination, as in an exercise of settling accounts with history and accessing a dimension of memory neutralized by trauma: intuition is an ancestral technology. Thus, he makes the living presence of people traversed by silent feelings, thoughts, and desires re-exist through his colors,” observes Menezes in the catalog.

The exhibition also highlights the expansion of techniques experimented with during Pereira's formative period, such as the use of oil pastel sticks on paper, revealing investigative processes in a work in transformation. Part of the works were produced in March 2025, during his artistic residency in Goiânia (GO), at the Sertão Negro Atelier and School of Arts, a project conceived by visual artist and educator Dalton Paula and film professor and researcher Ceiça Ferreira. Located in a quilombo (a settlement of escaped slaves) in the neighborhood known as Setor Shangri-lá, the space articulates Afro-Brazilian cultural traditions and contemporary art practices, with activities in ceramics, printmaking, capoeira angola, agroecology, and a film club.

“The residency at Sertão Negro was decisive for Rafael, not only technically, but also as an experience of exchange with other artists and an opening of the world. He returned more confident, more aware of his own voice—and this is strongly evident in this exhibition, which shows a broader Rafael with different works brought together in two distinct sections. They are almost two exhibitions that complement each other and help to better understand the artist. Opening the 2026 program with Rafael was a very conscious decision. He has a strong audience, his work circulates very well, and this is the perfect moment for us to hold his second solo show,” concludes Vilma Eid.

Service
Exhibition The Zombie Head
From March 5rd to April 11th
Monday to Friday, 11am to 19pm; Saturdays, 11am to 15pm; closed on Sundays.