The Valley and the Sea

Bringing together works shaped by the artist’s journey to Santiago, Cape Verde, the exhibition traces an encounter between the landscapes and gestures of Santiago and memories of his childhood in Brazil’s Jequitinhonha Valley. The Valley and the Sea reflects on distant places and how the sensations they hold feel unexpectedly close. Travel brings places closer, but also memories and sensations. In Santiago, Leandro Júnior encountered gestures, landscapes and ways of life that recalled his childhood in the Jequitinhonha Valley. Women carrying loads on their heads and the coexistence of rural and urban life emerged as familiar images, recognised in another place. In the paintings gathered for this exhibition, women are almost always seen from behind. Some stand alone before the sea and sky; others appear in groups, the pano di terra* tied around their waists. Their faces remain out of view. They occupy the centre and almost the entire surface of the paintings, yet we never see their gaze. This opens a tension between the presence the paintings give them and what remains inaccessible to the viewer. The images do not resolve that tension; they leave it suspended in our encounter with each figure. Clay and pigments connect the paintings to the material history of the Jequitinhonha Valley. Leandro’s experience with ceramics led him to explore the different colours of the valley’s soils and bring them onto canvas. Earth thus takes part in the passage between places: a material associated with the region of his childhood travels with the artist into his paintings of Santiago. In The Valley and the Sea, travel brings landscapes and ways of life into proximity, while also stirring sensations from another time. Santiago remains present in its figures and horizons; through them, the Jequitinhonha Valley reappears. Bodies, gestures, and material make this meeting something that unfolds across the paintings.