Marcela Cantuária's SUTUR|AR LIBERT|AR Exhibition at Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica

Marcela Cantuária presented her solo exhibition SUTUR|AR LIBERT|AR at the Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica in July. The show centered on a Tarot mandala developed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, framing the artist's work as a form of collective therapy for interpreting colonial wounds. Cantuária's allegorical paintings intentionally corrupt hegemonic history, creating glitches in colonial imagery to make space for excluded heroines, anonymous figures, and memories. Key series included Rainhas (2018), which allegorizes four women as updates of Tarot archetypes, and Mátria Livre (2018/19), featuring figures like Jovita Feitosa, Juana Azurduy, Dolores Cacuango, Tránsito Amaguaña, and Marielle Franco. A pivotal painting, Voltarei e serei milhões, dedicated to Marielle Franco, depicts her holding the head of Governor Wilson Witzel on a spear. Other works directly engaged symbols of power, such as a fragmented Christian cross in Jamais uma estrela na bandeira do norte (2019) and a deconstructed Brazilian flag in Fantasmas da esperança (2018). Cantuária's iconographic research assembles symbols that reveal other histories within official narratives. In a significant political gesture, she donated Voltarei e serei milhões to the Museu da Maré instead of selling it to collectors, asserting a commitment to addressing social pain. The artist, who has long been active with the Brigadas Populares, advocates for art that 'doe a quem doer' (give to whom it may hurt).