Pedro A.H. Paixão was born in Lobito, Angola, where he lived until the outbreak of civil war in 1975. He studied Fine Arts at Ar.Co in Lisbon and at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He holds a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto. He was awarded grants from the Luso-American Foundation, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Foundation for Science and Technology in Lisbon and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in Venice. He won the international Navigator Art on Paper prize in 2018, and the first major comprehensive exhibition of his work was held at CIAJG, in Guimarães (PT) that same year.
Pedro A.H. Paixão works in a variety of media – sound, video, installation – but the core of his practice is based on several cycles of graphic works, beginning with a series of scarlet drawings produced between 2007 and 2017. From 2019, the Portuguese artist developed new monochrome series: graphite drawings and pencil drawings in turquoise blue, purple and vermilion. These works, dedicated to the (neo)colonial period in Central Africa, address complex histories of struggle, emancipation and the possibility of reparations. Political history is presented in a suspended atmosphere that evokes dreams, animist magic and initiatory journeys. Creating an incantatory space, Pedro A.H. Paixão’s drawings offer a visual as well as an emotional experience that allows us to think and feel differently about their subject: not as a trial of history and morality, but with a distance that helps us to overcome taboos, prejudice and misunderstanding.
Paixão’s drawing is the most radical attempt to give back to drawing not only the aesthetic centrality it lost centuries ago but also, and especially, the status of a cosmic cognitive means we are no longer able to recognise in it.
– Emanuele Coccia, “Setting the World on Fire”, in Arson | Fogo posto (Lisboa, 2016)
Pedro Paixão’s most recent exhibition [Tabou] brings together the works that allowed him to bring out – and thus to see – Africa, of which he is one of the diasporic children. The lesson he draws out from it – the lesson we all draw from it – is more than astonishing. No judgment seems to come from it. No criticism. No jubilation in the face of a newfound origin. On the contrary, all recognition is literally impossible: if we must draw, it is because sight is always the opposite of recognition.
– Emanuele Coccia, “Being in Nuance”, in Tabou | Drawings (Brussels, 2018)
[ARTICLES]
Essays:
Selected press:
Benetton Foundation, Treviso (IT)
CAC Málaga Collection, Málaga (ES)
Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection (PT)
Carmona and Costa Foundation (PT)
Manuel de Brito Collection (PT)
PLMJ Collection (PT)
Fire and Spirits, Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE)
Aurora | Desenhos e outros materiais, Galeria 111, Lisbon (PT)
Paulus (with François Bucher), cur. Paulo Pires do Vale, CAV – Centro de Artes Visuais, Coimbra (PT)
Floating world, works 1996 -2018, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Internacional das Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (PT)
Navigator Art on Paper exhibition, Chiado 8, Lisbon (PT)
Tabou, cur. Sofia Lemos, Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE)
Fogo posto | Arson, Fundação Carmona e Costa, Lisbon (PT)
A cor de um eclípse, (with Catarina Dias), Ár Sólido project, Lisbon (PT)
Sic transit gloria mundi, Money Museum – Banco de Portugal, Lisbon (PT)
Fogo Posto, Fundaçao Carmona e Costa, Lisbon (PT)
Do fundo, Galeria 111, Lisbon (PT)
Studies in Red, Galeria 111, Lisbon (PT)
The human dimension of the sky, (with Paulo Brighenti), 102-100 Galeria de Arte, Castelo Branco (PT)
A Festa | The Feast, (with Rui Moreira), cur. Sara Antónia Matos and Delfim Sardo, Carmona e Costa Foundation, Lisbon (PT)
Drawing in Brueghel’s drawing, cur. Filipa Oliveira, Carlos Carvalho Arte Contemporânea, Lisbon (PT)
Bouzean, cur. Filipa Oliveira, Faro Capital da Cultura, Fabrica da Cerveja, Faro (PT)
Slow Motion: Pedro Paixão, cur. Miguel Wandschneider, Escola Superior de Arte e Design, Caldas da Rainha (PT)
*Ar-, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (PT)
Flieg!-, cur. Delfim Sardo, José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Centre, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (PT)
331 Amoreiras em Metamorfose, Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, Lisbon (PT)
A Moeda Viva [Living Currency], Galerias Municipais de Lisboa (PT)
Europa, Oxalá, Fondation Gulbenkian, Lisbon (PT)
Le pas suspendu, Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE)
Sonhos e Raciocínios – 500 anos depois de Leonardo da Vinci, FBAUP (PT)
Achrome, Irène Laub Gallery, Bruxelles (BE)
Politics of Discontent, cur. Jonathan Sullam, Irène Laub Gallery, Brussels (BE)
Navigator Art on Paper Prize, Chiado 8, Lisbon (PT)
GENTE – De Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso a Pedro A.H. Paixão, cur. Arlete Alves da Silva, Cem Anos de Representação Humana, Centro de Arte Manuel de Brito, Algés (PT)
Índios da Meia-Praia, cur. Nuno Faria, Galeria 111, Lisbon (PT)
Oracular Spectacular: Drawing and Animism, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (PT)
Rituals with Masks: a face to face, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (PT)
Lessons of Darkness, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (PT)
Beyond History, cur. Nuno Faria, Centro Internacional de Artes José de Guimarães, Guimarães (PT)
50 Years of Portuguese Art, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), Lisbon (PT)
25 frames per seconds: Videos from PLMJ Collection, cur. Miguel Amado, PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon (PT)
The Art of Memory, cur. Filipa Oliveira, Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (PT)
Mnemosyne, cur. Delfim Sardo, Encontros de Fotografia de Coimbra, Coimbra (PT)
A indisciplina do desenho, cur. Nuno Faria and Miguel Wandschneider, Ministério da Cultura – Institute of contemporary Art : Cupertino de Miranda Foundation, Vila Nova de Famalicão; José Malhoa Museum, Caldas da Rainha; Aveiro Museum, Aveiro (PT)
Rijeka Bienal of Arts, Rijeka (HR)
Sete Artistas ao Décimo Mês, cur. João Miguel Fernandes Jorge, José de Azeredo Perdigão Modern Art Center, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon (PT)
Navigator Art on Paper (PT)
John Quincy Adams Award, School of the Art Institute, Chicago (US)
