Território vivo by Sertão Negro

In 2020, Quilombo Kalunga was recognized by the United Nations as Brazil’s first TICCA—Território e Área Conservada por Comunidades Indígenas e Locais (Territory and Area Conserved by Indigenous and Local Communities). Founded by communities who resisted enslavement in Brazil, quilombos are autonomous spaces of freedom, culture, and care. In becoming the first TICCA, the quilombo’s status as a living territory of resilience and self-determination was affirmed on an international scale. The following year, a project inspired by the legacy of quilombos and their powerful role in imagining collective futures was founded by artist Dalton Paula and scholar Ceiça Ferreira. Serving as an art school with studios, art residency, library, open kitchen, and garden simultaneously, Sertão Negro is more than an institution—it is a holistic school rooted in Black cultural traditions and the spirit of the quilombo, where art, food, housing, and land are the grounds for communal life. By hosting Sertão Negro at Storefront, we welcome their spirit of community and reworlding. 

There are more than 3,000 quilombos officially recognized by the Brazilian state, each the result of centuries of Black resistance. Quilombo Kalunga is the largest, tracing back to the eighteenth century in the remote plateaus of the Cerrado, it spans over 500,000 acres and holds nearly 4,000 inhabitants. Sertão Negro grows from this living history, carrying it forward today through joint artist residencies and exchanges with Quilombo Kalunga that uplift quilombola knowledge, memory, and resilience as vital resources. 

Throughout this exhibition, the gallery becomes an active extension of Sertão Negro and the networks of support that have emerged from their work. Sertão Negro’s presence unfolds through artworks, archives, films, and a series of weekly public programs led by members of the collective in partnership with local organizations. Each embodied gathering—ranging from recurring Capoeira sessions to crafting workshops—affirms that knowledge is collective, care is mutual, and art is inseparable from everyday life.

CINECLUBE MARIA GRAMPINHO
Led by Ceiça Ferreira
September 25, October 2, October 16, November 6, November 20, December 4, 2025
Cineclube Maria Grampinho is the film program within Sertao Negro, dedicated to screening works by Black filmmakers, with a special focus on stories rooted in the Cerrado. Sertão founding member Ceiça Ferreira will curate a selection of films which will be followed by discussions.

CAPOEIRA WORKSHOPS
Led by Capoeira Guatambu and Mestre Gordinho in partnership with Institute of Capoeira and Brazilian Culture Guatambu
October 9, October 23, November 13, 2025
In partnership with Capoeira Guatambu, Storefront will host bi-weekly Capoeira classes in the gallery.

SÃO COSME AND SÃO DAMIÃO
Led by Storefront
September 27, 2025
Commemorating the deeply rooted Brazilian tradition of offering sweets to children, Storefront will provide bags of candy at the gallery. Each bag features a unique design and includes a small card that tells the story of Sao Cosme and Sao Damiao in English.

SEEDING SOVEREIGNTY
Led by Myllena Camargo Lima in partnership with the Kelly Street Garden
October 18, 2025
Informed by the idea that plants and seeds carry knowledge necessary for systemic transformation, this workshop moves through multiple ways of knowing: walking the land, practicing community care, and embodying ancestral healing wisdom.

INK, BRICK, AND ROOF
Led by Augusto Cesar in partnership with EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop
November 8, 2025
Exploring printmaking as a tool for political communication, this workshop draws inspiration from different moments and groups such as the Black Panther Party. Participants will produce posters utilizing print blocks, ink, and paper to create posters that reflect on housing, displacement, and the right to dwell.

CLAY AND MEMORY
Led by Anahy Jorge from Sertão Negro in partnership with Camille at the Wheel
November 22, 2025
Guided by an approach grounded in Afro-Indigenous knowledge systems, participants will create vessels and offerings that carry memory, myths, textures, and gestures connected to their own lineages and relationships to the land.

Saturday, September 13, 2025, the exhibition opened with a day of festivities including a workshop on berimbau: an iconic musical instrument used in Capoeira, hosted by artist and Capoeira master Mestre Guaraná of Sertão Negro in partnership with New York based Capoeira Guatambu. Mestre Gordinho of Capoeira Guatambu will then lead a capoeira demonstration, kicking off the recurring capoeira sessions that will be hosted in the gallery throughout the run of the show. All facilitators from Sertão Negro will introduce the workshops that they will host throughout the run of show, including a biweekly Cineclube and sessions on Seeding Sovereignty, Clay and Memory, and Printmaking. The festivities will conclude with a parade of Brazilian music and Bumba Meu Boi elements led by Sertão Negro member, Terená Kanouté.

Sertão Negro is composed of many members and collaborators, many of which will form part of the exhibition at Storefront. Dalton Paula and Ceiça Ferreira are its founding members. The school, maintained by Paula and located in the Brazilian Midwest, is inspired by the knowledge and way of life of quilombos and terreiros, intertwining art, community practices, and bio-architectural principles while fostering new relationships with nature. Sertão Negro offers classes in ceramics, capoeira, agroecology, engraving, and a residency program with three categories: a local program for artists from the region, as well as national and international programs. Paula describes Sertão Negro as a concept, an idea, and a living space where arts, communities, and nature are enmeshed. By honoring traditional knowledge and the daily lives of black spatiality, Sertão Negro positions itself as a cultural epicentre for preserving and expanding heritage, identity, and artistic expression for future generations. Paula’s artistic practice is inseparable from his work at Sertão Negro, where he fosters intergenerational dialogues that intertwine historical perspectives with artistic practices.

Dalton Paula is an artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, installation, photo performance, and video performance. He lives and works in Goiânia, Brazil, where he graduated from the Visual Arts program at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG). He was awarded the Chanel Next Prize in 2024 and the Marcantonio Vilaça Award in 2019. His recent solo exhibitions include: Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and Pinacoteca de Sāo Paulo, Brazil (2022-23); Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Centro Cultural Oscar Niemeyer, Goiânia (2014); Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Sala Samuel Costa, Goiânia, Brazil (2010). Major group exhibitions include: Foreigners Everywhere, Venice Biennale, Italy (2024); Afro-Atlantic Histories, touring from Museu de Arte de São Paulo and the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in Brazil (2018) to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and the Dallas Museum of Art, USA (2021-24); Compositions for Insurgent Times, Museu de Arte Moderna do Río de Janeiro, Brazil (2021-22); Critical Fabulations, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, USA (2021-23); Songs for Sabotage, New Museum Triennial, New York, USA (2018); O Triângulo do Atlântico, 11th Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018); The Atlantic Triangle, Goethe-Institut, Lagos, Nigeria (2018) and Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil (2016).

Ceiça Ferreira is a Brazilian scholar and cultural organiser. She holds a PhD in Communication from the University of Brasília (UnB) and serves as a professor and researcher in the Film and Audiovisual Studies programme at the State University of Goiás (UEG). She is co-founder of Sertão Negro School and Studio of Arts and director of Cineclube Maria Grampinho, a community-based film initiative dedicated to amplifying Black voices through cinema.

Her academic and curatorial work is grounded in the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and visual culture, with a particular focus on decolonial practices in film. Through teaching, research, and public programming, she fosters critical dialogues between territory, memory, and representation. Ceiça’s work expands the boundaries of what cinema can be—an act of pedagogy, resistance, and collective imagination.

Augusto Cesar is a visual artist and researcher from Barra do Garças, Brazil, currently based in Goiânia. He is pursuing an MA in Education, Art, and Visual Culture at the Federal University of Goiás (UFG) and is a member of the Ateliê Livre de Gravura, a collective focused on printmaking. His practice explores the intersections between traditional engraving techniques and experimental approaches to image-making, including zines and artist books. He currently teaches printmaking at Sertão Negro School and Art Studio.

Anahy Jorge is a visual artist and educator. She holds a PhD in Art Studies and Practices from the Université du Québec à Montréal, an MA in Advertising and Symbolic Production from the University of São Paulo (ECA/USP), and a BA in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Goiás (UFG). A former faculty member at UFG, she currently teaches ceramics at Sertão Negro School and Art Studio and the Basileu França School of the Future. Her practice moves between sculpture, installation, ceramics, and drawing, engaging with the tensions between materiality and immateriality.

Terená Kanouté is a dancer and researcher. Trained in contemporary Black dance by the Cia Treme Terra (2006–2020), her practice is grounded in the embodied knowledge of Black women and the invisible, unspoken forces that connect them. She holds an MA in Education from the University of São Paulo (FEUSP), where she focused on the life stories of Black women in Brazil. Currently, she coordinates the Corpo e Ludicidade programme and is an artist-in-residence at Sertão Negro School and Art Studio. She is a performer with the traditional group Boi do Rosário, teaches Afro dance at the UFG’s Centre for Body Practices, and studies Capoeira Angola at the Angoleiro Sim Sinhô Centre.

Myllena Camargo Lima is a farmer, environmental educator, and graduate in Forest Engineering from the Federal University of Goiás (UFG), Brazil. Based in Goiânia, she works to promote agroecology, highlight the sociobiodiversity of the Cerrado biome, and support the autonomy of women farmers. She currently leads Sertão Verde, the Environmental Management Department at Sertão Negro School and Art Studio, where she develops sustainability initiatives that integrate climate justice, anti-racist environmental practices, and art.

Mestre Guaraná (Carlos Alberto Martins Alves) is an artist, pedagogue, and master of Capoeira Angola with over 40 years of dedication to the practice. Based in Goiânia, Brazil, he is the founder of the Kalunga Capoeira Angola Group and holds a degree in Education from the Pontifical Catholic University of Goiás. His artistic research explores the memory and legacy of Capoeira Angola through engraving and pyrography, expanding its visual language and connecting it to Afro-diasporic ancestry and strategic playfulness. Since 2021, he has been a resident artist and capoeira instructor at Sertão Negro School and Art Studio.

Território vivo is the first in a series of exhibitions under the theme of Homelands. Homelands is a long-term research cycle which delves into the political dimensions of memory—examining what is obscured or distorted in the dominant record—through the work of artists and architects who unmake and remake their connection to place.

Homelands is made possible with support from the Mellon Foundation, Teiger Foundation, the Brendan & Helen Bechtel Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation; public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; and the invaluable generosity of Storefront’s Board of Directors, the Storefront Circle, Storefront members, and individual donors.