The Revolution Will Be Televised in These Multimedia Paintings

By featuring sculpture and animation, Thiago Martins de Melo’s political works are pushing the limits of traditional painting.

by Rodrigo Campuzano

March 5, 2016, 6:00pm

A biga do porta-bandeira vermelho. Oil on canvas, polyester and polyurethane resin, two TV monitors with stop motion animation, 260 x 360 cm. All images courtesy of the artist and Mendes Wood DM

Artists around the world have always brought to life revolutionary ideals through art, and in a blooming art scene with a powerful heritage like Brazil’s, it’s not surprising that many creative discourses convey a compelling social message. T hiago Martins de Melo’s outstanding multimedia paintings and sculptures are a part of this tradition.

The São Luis born artist is a constant presence in Brazil’s contemporary art circuit, and his work is included in most of the country's major exhibitions and biennials. Martins de Melo's visceral compositions are reminiscent of the works of lauded Mexican muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco; the blend of indigenous and modern elements conveys a cautionary tale of the fate that ancient civilizations face at the hands of today’s capitalism-driven world. Martins de Melo is no stranger to incorporating modern technologies into his traditional work; his recent paintings have included small screens with stop-motion animations that bring a strong narrative and composition into play. “We live in an incredible age to work with painting,” he tells The Creators Project, "from the most basic materials like pigments to software, the world is a database of immeasurable images that continues to grow exponentially. Painting will continue to live with the help of new technologies."

Coluna que anda sobre garras. Oil on fiberglass with resin, polyurethane and two TV monitors with stop motion animation, 245 x 197 x 70 cm

His newest exhibition, Bárbara Balclava, is the culmination of more than a year’s work and features an ambitious stop-motion film that brings to life the opposing natures that permeate his creative discourse. “The work itself was started a year and a half ago," says the artist about his first full-length feature. "I produced more than 3,000 small paintings and drawings to complete the film. My work always walked toward the limits of the language of painting; breaking the two-dimensionality of the same with the articulation of sculptural and three-dimensional sculptures was the first step in this expansion of pictorial language.”

Martins de Melo’s alluring work explores the material capabilities of traditional oil painting by combining it with sculpture and intricate animations, creating an aesthetic that’s somewhere between shamanism and anarchism. He acts as a voice for the oppressed; his latest series of multimedia paintings and large-scale sculptures is focused on the idea of “decolonizing and resisting anglo-eurocentrism by empowering the universal right to be master of your own world and reinventing it at your own will.”

Coluna que anda sobre garras. Oil on fiberglass with resin, polyurethane and two TV monitors with stop motion animation, 245 x 197 x 70 cm

This new body of work features a clash of mythological elements such as Anansi, the spider trickster of West African folklore, and a modern interpretation of a juggernaut that represents Anglo-European capitalism. With upcoming exhibitions in São Paolo’s MASP Museum and the Kunsthal KAdE Museum in the Netherlands, Martins de Melo's creative process continues to develop and evolve. “Making movies and working with the sound is something that I will continue doing and experiencing hereafter,” he says. "I’ve reached a point that I cannot and do not want to go back.”