Dora Longo Bahia's Ka'rãi Exhibition Confronts Violence Through Drawing at Galeria Vermelho

Dora Longo Bahia's exhibition 'Ka'rãi' at Galeria Vermelho in São Paulo, running until August 24, confronts contemporary violence and injustice through a practice of translating photographic images into drawings. The show includes works like 'A Girl A Gun – American Shot' (2015), featuring 195 drawings from film stills of actresses with guns; 'Paraiso – Consolação' (2019), portraits of Brazilian indigenous people; and 'Revoluções (projeto para calendário)' (2016), 12 drawings based on revolutionary photographs. Longo Bahia collects journalistic and media images, transforming them through graphic, autographic drawing to resist the rapid consumption and clichéd visual structures of photography. Her work grants photographic traces the density of human action, seeking depth in superficial imagery. The exhibition also features 'Fogo' (2019), reproducing photos of burned Brazilian cultural institutions on aluminum thermal blankets, and the controversial 'Lava Jato' (2018), with 98 interventions on pornographic magazine pages overpainted with news images. Two 2019 works, 'Fuga (Terceira voz)' and 'Fuga (Sujeito)', incorporate augmented reality technology. The artist's approach aligns with historical figures like Andy Warhol, Geraldo de Barros, and Ai Weiwei in re-signifying images. The title 'Ka'rãi' is a Tupi word meaning 'to scratch', phonetically echoing a contemporary Brazilian interjection of rage and indignation.