Cuiabá, MT, 1978. – Lives and works in Cuiabá, Brazil.
Represented by Galeria Mirante das Artes.
PIPA prize 2018 nominee.
BABU78 (Adão Silva Segundo), is a draughtsman, graffiti and visual artist, and also an art educator in graffiti workshops. Currently, BABU78’s production is divided between street murals and studio paintings, drawings and illustrations. Amongst his recent solo exhibitions, in Brazil, are: “Abissal”, Blaze Gallery, São Paulo, 2016; “A Casa do Parque”, Cuiabá; “Caótico”, SESC Amazônia das Artes, Galeria do SESC, Palmas, Rondônia, Teresina, Macapá and Boa Vista, 2012. He has participated in several group shows, including the most recent: “Irigaray Arte Cidade”, Palácio da Instrução, Cuiabá, MT; 2016; 25º Salão Jovem Arte Matogrossense, Palácio da Instrução, Cuiabá, MT, 2016; “Projeto Liberdade Assistida”, Galeria Silva Freire OAB-MT, Cuiabá, MT, 2015.
Critical Texts
BABU78 – Exhibition “PROFUNDIDADE” [“DEEPNESS”]
By Amanda Gama and Willian Gama
July 2016
Art in the center, breaking the boundaries of the social isolation in the city’s outskirts – this is GRAFFITI. Known by its critical voracity, its origin comes from the Roman Empire times, although it became popular in New York, at the end of the 60s’. Graffiti was connected to street movements, urban tribes, marking their territories as well as posting complains in walls and subways through art. In Brazil, it became popular in the 70s’ with improved Brazilian styles and techniques.
Babu 78 is an urban open heart provoker, full of attitude. Babu78 carries a ‘statement-work’, self-conscious and politically active, that reflects the daily reality of a non-centered society. Denouncements posted on walls, canvas, paper or any other surface that can handle the cry for help of those living on the outskirts of luck and their own rights.
The graffiti that the artist produces locates, questions and opens a dialogue with the community, in a deep manner. The theme, not always a clear one, requires the spectator’s attention not only to the image presented but to the depicted issue that needs attention.
Babu78 quotes: “I may be a paper boat, but the sea will not swallow me.” He looks at himself and examines his own painting. All of a sudden, he faces the word DEEPNESS and realizes he was always exploring deeper meanings in his production, pushing the superficial approach of a theme. That is the starting point of one of the biggest depths known to the artist: the sea, the space, and the heart.
If “Art is the experimental exercise of freedom”, we may say that the libertarian Babu 78 exists today in Mato Grosso. His work goes beyond the canvas and the walls. In the grayish Cuiabá, it is peace in the middle of chaos. His authentic Brazilian graffiti is like the Manifesto Pau-Brasil from Oswald de Andrade; “the millionaire contribution of all mistakes. As we speak. As we are”. This is the work produced by this artist; the daily picture of our Brazil.
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