With Patois/Patuá, Paulo Nazareth presents a comprehensive retrospective at WIELS, highlighting more than two decades of artistic practice. Through two powerful symbols of survival and resilience, Nazareth explores the interplay of memory, language, and ritual in communities shaped by Afro-Brazilian, Indigenous, and anti-colonial struggles. The exhibition engages with Brussels – a city where language and identity are central to social and political life.

Paulo Nazareth is an artist who creates as he walks. With his self-proclaimed “Arte de Preceito” (precept art), his artistic practice is rooted in radical displacement and movement, such as crossing borders on foot. Through various media – from video and photography to found objects – he explores personal stories and routes that have been shaped by history, the impact of which is still felt today. Nazareth investigates how language and objects can serve as tools for survival, particularly for those displaced by colonial histories and global migration. By transforming movement into an act of resistance, he bears witness to the lives of the forgotten and the silenced.

The exhibition explores two powerful symbols of survival and resilience: patois, a non-standard dialect spoken by marginalised communities, and patuá, an Afro-Brazilian amulet symbolizing protection and remembrance. Each of Nazareth’s works can be seen as a type of patuá; every object and image he creates carries the will to remember and resist, illuminating how cultural items become shields of identity in the direst circumstances.

Patois, emerging as the voice of the people, ignores the constraints to which formal language is subjected in the process of adaptation to colonial and national structures. This convergence of resistance finds particularly fertile ground in Brussels, a city officially divided between French and Dutch, where numerous other languages coexist in varying states of recognition or invisibility. Through the artworks presented at WIELS, Nazareth critically addresses Brussels’ vanishing local dialect, its complex linguistic divides, and its fraught relationship with immigration.

As a significant act of resistance, Paulo Nazareth will not physically come to Brussels for this exhibition. He has made a personal commitment not to set foot in Europe until he has first visited all the countries in Africa, honoring the continent that has deeply influenced his work and identity. This refusal to enter Europe reflects Nazareth’s critique of colonial histories and the power dynamics between the Global North and South. His presence manifests through Paulo Nazareth Ltda, a network of family and collaborators who activate the exhibition in his absence. Together, they transform the space into a living archive of stories passed across generations.

Curator: Fernanda Brenner