LONDON.- Paulo Nimer Pjota (b.1988, São José do Rio Preto) is a Brazilian artist who predominantly works in oil, tempera and acrylic on canvas. His paintings draw on art history, popular culture, mythology and folk tales, merging multiple and often contrasting references to create new, imaginary scenarios. His approach borrows from the sampling and remixing practices adopted in Brazilian hip-hop and rap music, as well as on his experience as a graffiti artist as a teenager. Even then he was an aesthetic disrupter, pushing against the rules governing street art, which he found to be restricting. Breaking down cultural hierarchies has remained at the heart of his practice ever since.
At the SLG, Pjota presents a new series of paintings against an expansive mural painted directly onto the gallery walls to create a magical environment populated by mythical characters, dragons, crocodiles, monkeys and imaginary beasts. The sun, stars and moon are recurring motifs in Pjota’s cosmos, as are ancient and modern vases, shells and invented vessels, often brimming with flowers and hybrid plants. The presence of music is also implied, by fantastical creatures drawn on the walls. A three-headed beast plays the trumpet, horn and sax all at the same time, whilst simultaneously beating a drum. One animal’s throat merges with the instrument it’s playing, and another sits on a turntable, scratching a record with its feet whilst playing a violin with its hands. This injection of silent music heralds the potential of a hidden world, of secrets behind the surface of this mysterious garden. Bringing together such disparate elements from the past, present and an imaginary world, Pjota introduces us to a new universe in which established attributions of value to various objects, artefacts and cultures are dismantled, making way for an alternative future.
The character of that alternative future is deliberately ambiguous. The exhibition’s title, Encantados, meaning enchanted in Portuguese, draws on the dual definitions of a word which can refer to being charmed and filled with delight, but also to a state of being placed under a spell or bewitched. The potential for both positive and negative readings and the tension between them or their perhaps inevitable coexistence, runs throughout the show. All the works are imbued with a sense of fantasy and magic, but whereas some are overtly joyous, others could be scenes from a post-apocalyptic world. Unlike a story book in which a clear narrative unfolds, with a beginning, middle and end, Pjota’s works leave the viewer to make their own sense of his fantastical scenes.
The exhibition at the SLG is Pjota's first exhibition with a public gallery in the UK. It is also his second institutional solo exhibition following his debut at Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, in 2025.
An exhibition of work by British Nigerian artist Ranti Bam is on show in the SLG’s Fire Station Galleries during the same period, 1 May – 23 August 2026.
