Joy, positivity, and resilience: three keywords to describe the artist Guilherme Almeida.

Manuela Parrino | Joy, positivity, and resistance: three keywords to describe artist Guilherme Almeida, 2022

Joy comes from his family; positivity from the need to escape the stereotype of the Black artist as poor and surrounded by violence; and resistance to a system where being Black in Brazil today still means facing racism and daily struggles.

When I met him at his studio in Salvador, Bahia, I was struck by his simple complexity. "Why didn't people question Renaissance painters who depicted a woman getting dressed or a woman with a piece of jewelry just because they felt like painting those subjects? As a Black artist, why must I paint misery and violence?"

Guilherme wants to paint his life, the life of Bahia—the Blackest but also the most joyful city in Brazil—and of his family, which is a riot of parties, happy gatherings, and music. "My grandmother had six children, and each has two or three children. We all live in two interconnecting buildings. This is my life; this is what I want to represent. Of course, living in a suburban neighborhood, I also grew up surrounded by violence, but that is not what defines me."

Let’s start from the beginning. From a young age, Guilherme loved to draw and read comic books, dreaming of becoming a cartoonist. His parents wanted him to study architecture; instead, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. His first exhibition came at age 17. Studying painting theory and discovering Giacometti led him to abstractionism, but the public's reaction led him to revisit figurative art. "People not involved in art think the abstract artist is hyper-intellectual and distance themselves because they don't feel smart enough to understand. I saw this reaction in the young people who came to my first exhibition. I wanted to create art to communicate with the entire public, but at the same time, I didn't want to distance myself from the abstract. So, I tried to bring the figurative back into the abstract through materials, textures, and creative processes."

Does it bother you to be labeled as an artist of color? "Not so much, because I talk about intimate issues like family or masculinity that transcend race. It bothers me if the choice of my subjects is questioned. My paintings come from photographs, from moments of my daily life. My inspiration is Kerry James Marshall. He only paints the everyday: a man in a barbershop, a woman applying makeup, and a family in the garden. Marshall was my first reference for Black art because, at the Academy, everything is Eurocentric." He continues by telling me that even the materials were Eurocentric: "they forced us to buy imported pencils, paints, and paper. The idea was that you are a good artist if you paint in oil on linen. I couldn't afford that, so I started using the materials I had at home."

The series "Destruição de Mercados" (Market Destruction) came from this struggle—portraits on newspaper pages. "Daily, in the newspapers, Black people are portrayed as murderers, thieves, and traffickers. And I used to paint happy people. At first, it didn’t matter to me if it was a portrait of a famous person; I just wanted to paint a smiling Black person on the front page of the newspaper. Over time, I realized that people relate more if they know the people being painted."

Working on the smile led me to the study of slavery and the slave market, where they looked at teeth to see if Black people were healthy. In hip-hop culture, on the other hand, Black people began taking photos of themselves showing off their teeth encrusted with gold or diamonds. It wasn't just a smile. It was a challenge."

The golden smiles painted by Guilherme represent power because in Brazil—where slavery still persists in new guises—happiness and smiles are a powerful tool for the Black population against racism.