Gustavo Nazareno in 'Améfrica — Diasporic Connections in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection'
Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo, Seville
04 March 2026

Opening its 2026 programme, the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo presents 'Améfrica — Diasporic Connections in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection', curated by Hélio Menezes. Bringing together 128 works by 99 artists from Africa, the Americas, Europe and Oceania, the exhibition is grounded in the concept of amefricanidade formulated by the Afro-Brazilian intellectual Lélia Gonzalez. Her term reframes the Americas through the structuring presence of African diasporic histories, proposing a relational cartography that is at once political, cultural and aesthetic.

Drawn from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection and activated through El Espacio 23, the exhibition unfolds across five thematic chapters—Adaptation, Resistance, Reinterpretation, New Forms and Amefricanas—tracing the enduring impact of African cosmologies, migration routes, spiritual systems and aesthetic languages on contemporary artistic production.

Within this transatlantic framework, Brazilian artist Gustavo Nazareno—represented by Opera Gallery—is included with Iemanjá Carregando a Lua Cheia para o Céu (Iemanjá Carrying the Full Moon to the Sky) (2021), presented on loan from the Pérez Art Museum Miami; reinforcing the institutional dialogue surrounding his practice.

The painting draws on Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions, depicting the orixá Iemanjá — deity of the sea and maternal protector—in an act of cosmic elevation. Suspended between terrestrial and celestial realms, the figure carries the full moon skyward, an image that merges devotional iconography with an oneiric, symbolist sensibility.

Situated within the exhibition’s chapter "Reinterpretation", the work resonates with Menezes’s exploration of how diasporic communities have reshaped spiritual knowledge systems under conditions of displacement and resistance. Rather than treating Afro-Atlantic religiosity as ethnographic reference, Nazareno reclaims it as a living cosmology—sensuous, empowered and contemporary. His figures inhabit a realm where mythology becomes a site of self-fashioning and sovereignty.

In the context of 'Améfrica', Nazareno’s painting does not merely illustrate diasporic heritage; it enacts it. Through spiritual iconography and painterly intensity, he contributes to a wider re-mapping of art history—one in which African diasporic epistemologies are not peripheral, but foundational.