- Artist/Maker:
- Nuno Ramos
- Bio:
- Brazilian, b. 1960
- Title:
- Thoughts of Dust—Antigone, Second Act
- Date:
- 2021
- Medium:
- Graphite, pigment, and dust on paper
- Dimensions:
- 59 1/16 × 59 1/16 in. (150 × 150 cm)
- Credit Line:
- Gift of The Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation
- Accession Number:
- 2022-80.7
Not On View
Nuno Ramos is a polymath: he holds a degree in philosophy, in addition to writing plays, poems, short stories, and samba lyrics. As an artist, Ramos creates paintings, drawings, performances, kinetic sculptures, and installations that are sensuous, lyrical, and often laced with absurdity. Ramos is also a trenchant critic of Brazilian politics. In 2019, when Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil, he began to make work connected to Sophocles’s fifth-century BCE tragedy Antigone. In the play, Antigone endeavors to bury her brother in accordance with divine law, an effort that the ruler of Thebes furiously opposes. Ramos’s interest in Antigone stems from this powerful depiction of moral right in conflict with state power. Thoughts of Dust—Antigone, Second Act is composed of thin layers of graphite powder, pigments, and dust from the artist’s studio, which he transfers to paper through a monotype process. Its material is a quiet tribute to Antigone’s courage.
Information may change as a result of ongoing research.