Self-taught photographer Eustáquio Nevse from Brazil presents projects at the Venice Biennale that bring Afro-diasporic experiences to the international stage and give them new dimensions. Neves exhibits two series at the 2026 Biennale Arte.
Building relationships with a centuries-old Black community in Minas Gerais over a long period of time led to the creation of Arturos (1993–1995). The collection can be viewed both as an archive, a documentation of the variety of Black social patterns in Brazil, and an example of the artist’s early artistic techniques, such as darkroom modification.
Cartas ao Mar (2016) is the result of research conducted by Neves in the ruins of Rio de Janeiro’s Valongo Wharf, which was formerly the biggest landing spot for Africans held in slavery. In response to the horrors that pervaded the area, Neves turned to his own archive instead of taking pictures there. He altered each of these seven photos to the point that no one could be identified.
As part of the interview series, a conversation with Venice Biennale artists, Abirpothi, featuring Brazilian artist Eustáquio Nevse. The artist discusses in detail his work and his presence in the Venice Biennale.
Q: Your work has long confronted the historical and social fractures surrounding Afro-Brazilian life. What does it mean for you to bring these histories and memories to the global stage of the Venice Biennale at this moment?
Eustáquio Neves: I strongly believe that these issues should be debated in a collective and global space since I touch on humanitarian issues: racism, the effects of colonisation, for example. Although my work alone may not account for this reparation, it is important not to stop resisting.
Q: In both Arturos and Letters to the Sea, memory seems to function not only as remembrance but also as resistance. Do you see your artistic practice as a form of historical repair against Brazil’s erasures of Black history?
Eustáquio Neves: Yes, in fact, resistance is one of the points that anchor my narrative. The fact that I am here today, able to do my working discuss what I discuss. Has to do with the resistance of those who came before me.
Q: Arturos emerged from your close relationship with the quilombola community in Minas Gerais. How did living with and building trust within the community shape the emotional and political language of that series?
Eustáquio Neves: In my experience with the Arturos over almost five years, which resulted in the series in question, I began to understand more clearly how the shared collective environment reinforces not only the group but also each individual. This series was born out of a better understanding of this group. A concern that I have always had regarding the history of black people, who are almost always portrayed in a way when photographed.
Q: Your works often involve manipulated negatives, abrasions, overlays, stains, ashes, and archival materials. How did your background in chemistry influence your experimental photographic language?
Eustáquio Neves: I am frequently asked about this relationship. Undoubtedly, my chemical knowledge allows me to understand certain concepts through chemical formulas, but I attribute this to the restless, curious person I have always been. I think that, unconsciously, my photographic work is a decolonial form.
Q: You have said that seeing the work of Arthur Bispo do Rosário was transformative for you. What did that encounter open up in your imagination as an artist, and how did it push you beyond conventional photography?
Eustáquio Neves: The encounter with Arthur Bispo’s work was very impactful. I had been researching for several years on how to expand my photographic work into other unconventional areas. But among the photography groups I frequented, I didn’t find peers to discuss what I wanted. Contact with his work and the way he created it was fundamental and encouraging in helping me overcome my inhibitions about photographic norms.
Q: In Letters to the Sea, you chose not to photograph directly at Valongo Wharf because of the violence embedded in the site. Instead, you returned to your archive and transformed existing images. Why was absence more powerful for you than direct representation?
Eustáquio Neves: Letters to the Sea, which speak of the Valongo Wharf in Rio de Janeiro, the port through which more than 60% of enslaved people entered Brazil during the forced immigration that was slavery. Many of these people, crossing the Atlantic in subhuman conditions, arrived lifeless and were buried in mass graves at the same location. So it would be past lives and memories of those lives that I should talk about. Since it was gentrified, erasing a part of our history.
Q: The title Letters to the Sea is deeply poetic. What are these “letters” communicating, and to whom are they addressed — the ancestors, the present, or perhaps future generations?
Eustáquio Neves: Letters to the Sea are letters to remember, alluding to the practice of throwing bottles into the sea with messages inside so that they could be accessed in remote places and times, or not.
Q: In the Venice Biennale presentation, the portraits in Letters to the Sea become almost anonymous, dissolved into layers of tombstones, scratches, and textures. Is this anonymity a way of speaking about the countless enslaved lives erased from official history?
Eustáquio Neves: Exactly, it’s about erasure.
Q: Across your career, your work has consistently challenged structural racism and the lingering afterlife of slavery in Brazil. As a Global South artist, do you feel your practice is also confronting the dominance of Western historical narratives within art institutions?
Eustáquio Neves: This would be my wish because, as I already mentioned, this discussion is not for a specific group; it is open to everyone.
Q: Your photographs often feel like archaeological surfaces rather than straightforward images. Are you trying to reconstruct memory, or to show that memory itself is fragmented, wounded, and incomplete?
Eustáquio Neves: It could be both, because I work a lot from archives, and those archives don’t always account for what I want to discuss; some I need to force, invent archives.
Q: You have described photography as a laboratory of experimentation. What possibilities does altering and damaging the image give you that traditional documentary photography cannot?
Eustáquio Nevse: Yes, in fact, the way I think about photography, this conventional approach wouldn’t be able to fully address what I propose to discuss, and how to discuss it.
Q: Many of your works deal with absence — absent ancestors, erased Black histories, invisible bodies, forgotten rituals. Do you think your art is ultimately about making the unseen visible?
Eustáquio Neves: Yes, and I think that’s also true of all my imagination. What I experience and think.
Q: From Arturos to Retrato Falado, your work repeatedly returns to family, ancestry, and inherited memory. How much of your artistic practice is autobiographical, and how much is collective history?
Eustáquio Neves: Initially, I see all my work as autobiographical, even when I’m talking about others. But it’s collective because it’s about people’s memories, it speaks of the present of these people, and I hope for the future if my work endures.
Q: At a time when the art world is increasingly discussing decolonisation, what do you hope audiences at the Venice Biennale understand about Afro-Brazilian history, resistance, and survival through your works?
Eustáquio Neves: I understand my photographic work as a decolonial process. Regarding Afro-Brazilian history, if my works can bring even the slightest reflection, I will feel understood, and my work will have fulfilled its purpose.
Krispin Joseph PX, a poet and journalist, completed an MFA in art history and visual studies at the University of Hyderabad and an MA in sociology and cultural anthropology from the Central European University, Vienna.
