SAO PAULO.- Maranhão, “great sea”, “flowing sea”, a place of constant movement and diverse cultural interplay. In this web of exchanges and hybridizations, reggae began reaching different regions of the state and the island of São Luís in the 1970s. At first, it arrived through the shortwave radios of amateur operators who picked up signals from across the Americas, including the Caribbean. Later, it came with sailors from places like French Guiana who docked in coastal cities on pirate ships, transporting—among other goods—reggae vinyls that were sold at the ports.
On Maranhão soil, Jamaican music took on variations—one of them in the way people dance. In Maranhão, reggae is danced in pairs, closely held, in a sway reminiscent of rumba, salsa, merengue, and bolero. Dancing reggae as a couple is an encounter of skins—free bodies brought together by a rhythm that crossed the Atlantic and earned São Luís the nickname of the Brazilian Jamaica. These rhythmic and aesthetic singularities naturally spill over into the field of visual arts, and artistic production in Maranhão is understood as part of a broad ecosystem of possibilities—different ways of producing discourse and knowledge, of thinking and making art.
In this context, a selection of contemporary art from Maranhão arrives on Jamaica Street with the intent of fostering encounters among works characterized by an immersion in themes that are initially local but unfold across distinct historical, political, and geographical contexts, as well as issues of race and gender—converging in various conceptual and formal aspects. The group of works on display here follows its own internal logic, guided by a bodily empathy between image and object. Stripped of hierarchy, the works—with their singular tempos and flows—interlace in a rhythm that speaks to thinking together.
Sound and rhythm waves arrive through photographs, videos, and collages. Leaves rustle and encounter other plants, colors, sounds, and textures in paintings, embroideries, and sculptures. The arrangement of the pieces reflects a curatorial approach that emphasizes material richness, vitality, and presence—qualities that render the works active, self-generating, and productive. Enchantment and materiality bring thought and exchange onto the same plane, flattening hierarchies. What is often considered peripheral emerges as central, expanding relationships between different times—like pathways that cross long distances and meet in a junction of shared poetic and formal forces. A collective visuality that flows through many moments in Brazilian art.
Building on this, the exhibition brings together contemporary art from Maranhão, represented by artists from Lima Galeria in São Luís, and works from the collection of Martins&Montero in São Paulo, which span key moments in Brazilian art and stand out for their diversity of languages and media. The works by Maranhão artists form an exemplary group, enabling dialogue with art produced in both Brazilian and international contexts, and opening space for critical and theoretical discussions expanded by artists from other regions—Alagoas, Rio Grande do Norte, Bahia, Goiás, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Rio Grande do Sul—represented by Martins&Montero, who have contributed to the Brazilian art landscape over the past three decades. The exhibition also draws on the geographical and architectural features of its venue: the Martins&Montero gallery, located on Jamaica Street, in São Paulo, in a 1950s house that naturally evokes a space of transit, displacement, and, above all, encounter.
This project reinforces the experimental actions undertaken by Martins&Montero, as well as the path carved out by Lima Galeria, whose developments include participation in networked projects rooted in Maranhão. It also builds on important curatorial work already developed through educational initiatives, labs, and research, aimed at fostering dialogue between Maranhão’s artistic and cultural production and other practices, places, and both formal and informal institutions. In this way, the exhibition Maranhão na Jamaica unfolds as an extension of listening, collaboration, movement, and resistance: a collective dance in search of new partners, new steps, synchronized movements, encounters, and celebrations.
