This publication accompanies Patricia Leite's exhibition Paisagem de Lenda at Thomas Dane Gallery in London (7 Jun - 3 Aug 2024).

Paisagem de Lenda (Landscape of Legend) presents a new series of paintings and a floor-based tapestry, which draw upon the legends of Brazil’s Indigenous people that were told to Leite during her childhood. These stories and mythologies are deeply connected to the landscape and ecology of Brazil and played an instrumental role in shaping the artist’s worldview and imagination.

Central to the exhibition is the panoramic nightscape Jaxi, an oil on wood painting named for the moon goddess from the Tupi-Guarani origin mythology of the water lily. For Mumuru (por Burle Marx), Leite worked in collaboration with São-Paolo-based Uruguayan tapestry maker Jorge Francisco Soto to create a tapestry that transforms part of the gallery floor into a lake, its surface populated with giant lily pads and flowers. In its totality, the exhibition demonstrates Leite’s preoccupation with the essential qualities of light and water: rainfall, sea, reflections, starlight, dusk, and moonlight are all evoked through paint and textile.

Leite’s visual idiom oscillates between abstraction and representation. Through building up layers upon layers of paint, Leite creates a luminosity and a texture that captures the atmosphere and natural environment of Brazil. The works exhibited in Paisagem de Lenda encourage the viewer to sensitively contemplate the natural world, lest the landscapes themselves disappear into myth through neglect or environmental devastation.

Featuring an essay by José Augusto Ribeiro in Portuguese, along with an English translation by Rafaela Mendes Ferreira.