ROSANA PAULINO READS THE ARCHIVE AGAINST THOSE WHO MADE IT

HYPERALLERGIC
OCTOBER 19, 2026

“The first Afro-Brazilian woman to earn a PhD in visual arts in Brazil, [Rosana] Paulino sees the colonial past as an active force in her country’s present, visible above all in the violence, archival and literal, against Black people, especially women. Her solo exhibition ¿História Natural?, organized by the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, is on view through November 1. It centers on its namesake, the 2016 artist’s book that won Paulino the 2025–27 Jane Lombard Prize for Art and Social Justice, along with its $25,000 award. The book’s pages pair linocut and drypoint with altered prints of photographs made for the Harvard naturalist Louis Agassiz’s 1865–66 expedition to Brazil, collaged and stitched onto paper and fabric. Nothing is incidental; even the lettering is smeared with intention. ‘This history is dirty,’ she said while leafing through its pages.”

—Daniela Mayer