Protegida, the first solo exhibition by Rafaella Braga.

With an overwhelming energy, Braga has transformed the cavernous interior of the gallery into an intimate, contemplative space, filled with playful color and nostalgia inducing spatial adaptations. The exhibition consists of specially conceived large scale painting, sculpture, and an installation consisting of lights, sound, and nearly 100 hand crafted stars. This new body of work is the apex of Braga‘s current ouvre, employing the familiar materials and techniques that have defined the artist‘s practice in the years since her move from her native Brazil to Berlin. Nevertheless, Protegida is a wholly new experience as the breathtaking ceiling to floor canvases drape down and surround the viewer, while a full height installation sparkles above your head throughout the gallery. The gaze is guided slowly through different compositions and objects, each one a fantastic expression of

Braga‘s evolved painterly, sculptural and immersive language. Rafaella Braga moved to Berlin seeking a place to grow into her artistic self. The importance of this search has been vital to developing the artist‘s practice, as the young Braga already knew that her ideas for large-scale transformational artwork could only grow in a nurturing environment. For the artist, her transatlantic relocation represented an opportunity to develop a new frontier, one where she could find the means to create the artworks of her intuition.

The paintings on unstretched canvas in Protegida begin with the sketch of a human figure, a shadowy identity through which Braga engages in dialogue. The product of these often cryptic exchanges contains texts, patterns, and poetry, which reveal the artist‘s expressive brushwork and her mastery of the technique of paint pouring.