There is a major Paulo Nazareth exhibition to see in Venice (but the artist himself hasn't seen it)

A major exhibition of Brazilian artist Paulo Nazareth, titled "Algebra," has opened at Punta della Dogana in Venice, but the artist himself is absent. Nazareth has kept a promise not to set foot in Europe until he has crossed African territories on foot, as they existed before the arbitrary divisions imposed by the 1884 Berlin Conference. He did not participate in the installation or opening, instead staging a simultaneous event in Veneza, a working-class district of Ribeirão das Neves, Brazil—a gesture he also made when invited to the 2013 Venice Biennale. The exhibition centers on structural violence and uses attention and care as strategies for healing, with the word "algebra" referring to the act of recomposing what was broken.

The exhibition matters because it challenges the traditional relationship between artist, institution, and audience, foregrounding a radical political stance against colonial legacies and systemic oppression. Nazareth's work draws on his family history—his grandmother was interned in the Colônia de Barbacena psychiatric hospital, where over 60,000 people, mostly healthy, died under Brazil's military dictatorship in a campaign of ethnic cleansing. By taking his grandmother's name and walking naked across the Americas, Nazareth transforms his practice into a form of "preceito" (precept), a rule of conduct. The show invites visitors to leave offerings and avoid stepping on a trail of coarse salt that traces the shape of a slave ship across the gallery floor, making the exhibition an immersive meditation on memory, violence, and repair.