The Many Deaths of Antonio Parreiras

“Landscape painter Antônio Parreiras (1860-1937) steps into the realm of the dead. Wandering through darkness, forests and cities, he reunites with old friends, questions his art, and reflects on the history and future of a devastated country” (Lucas Parente). A delirious journey that brings forth representations of a land shaped by colonial imagination. Parreiras produces images of nature as idealised as the endless coffee plantations, haunted by the vertigo of a country defined by processes of systematic destruction. He is trapped in a collective imaginary that oscillates between farce and requiem.