The Brazilian artist Juliana dos Santos is the inaugural recipient of a newly launched residency for women artists, founded by Pinacoteca de São Paulo and the Chanel Culture Fund. Dos Santos’s work explores themes related to plants and pigments native to Brazil and the sensory experience of colour; it spans painting, installation, video, performance and other media.
Dos Santos was born in 1987 in São Paulo and holds a doctorate in art from the Instituto de Artes at São Paulo State University. In her thesis, The Time of Colour, Dos Santos presents her research on the blue pigmentation of the Clitoria ternatea flower, a central element in her work. Dos Santos encourages viewers to observe the “performative” qualities of the pigment, which “fades and opens a sensitive space for reflection on transformation and impermanence”, she tells The Art Newspaper.
The forthcoming residency will provide Dos Santos with opportunity to further her botanical studies and explore new technologies that can contribute to her investigations of the flower. “I’m interested in capturing its sound and scent, expanding its presence into other sensory dimensions,” Dos Santos says. The residency will build on her research into texts like The Nature of Brazilian Colours by Maibe Maroccolo—who developed handmade watercolour paints from yerba mate, Brazilian indigo, Catuaba bark and other local plants.
The work of artists like Wolfgang Laib (with his use of yellow pollen) and Aboubakar Fofana (with his indigo blue) have also been important references. “I have developed a desire to better understand the origins of colour and different types of pigments,” Dos Santos says. “I am particularly interested in engaging in dialogue with artists who work with colour through its raw materials.”
Inside Juliana dos Santos’s studio Photo: Levi Fanan
This month, Dos Santos opened her first solo museum exhibition at Galeria Praça, a space situated in Pina Contemporânea, one of three complexes that make up Pinacoteca de São Paulo. The exhibition, Juliana dos Santos: Temporã (until 8 February 2026), is the culmination of a previous residency, where Dos Santos says she sought to “push the boundaries of scale”, creating 200 metres of pigmentation using the Clitoria ternatea flower and a transfer technique.
“The way Juliana approaches her practice is dynamic and open to the unexpected—to the timing of the flower, to the shifts brought by the temperature of each colour and pigment she experiments with,” says the show’s curator, Lorraine Mendes. “Juliana moves beautifully through colour and shapes, from paintings and seedlings hung on the walls, to experimentation with forms that break away from the primacy of the rectangle as the standard pictorial surface.”
She adds: “Having Temporã broadens public reach, generates content for the museum’s own educational initiatives around abstract art, educates new ways of seeing and creates dialogues with younger artists who are still searching for their own poetics and paths.”
Inside Juliana dos Santos’s studio Photo: Levi Fanan
Next month, Dos Santos will present a virtual reality (VR) work that similarly explores the spiritual symbolism of natural pigments in the 36th edition of the Bienal de São Paulo (6 September 2025-11 January 2026). The work will be shown as part of the biennial’s newly launched Apparitions programme, which brings VR works to the exterior of the main exhibition building and other sites.
Dos Santos was previously included in the 12th Mercosur Biennial, which was held virtually in 2020, and participated in the third edition of the Triennial of Arts at Sesc Sorocaba in São Paulo in 2021. She has been featured in several group exhibitions in Brazilian museums, including at Museu de Arte do Rio, and has been nominated twice for the Pipa Prize—one of the most prestigious awards for contemporary artists in Brazil.
The Chanel Culture Fund was launched in 2021 to support artists and long-term art projects. It supported the French Caribbean artist Julien Creuzet as the French representative at the 60th Venice Biennale. It also collaborated with Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin this year to launch an annual commissioning series for monumental works, which was given to the Czech artist Klára Hosnedlová in its inaugural year. The fund also holds the Chanel Next Prize, granting recipients €100,000 and mentorship opportunities.
