Nina Pandolfo “Life’s Flavor” Show Catalogue

March 22, 2010

Nina is one of Brazil’s leading female contemporary artists and one of the best known female street artists in the world. Born in Tupã, São Paulo in 1977, her artwork depicts an expansive, colorful landscape populated with sassy wide-eyed girls, their playthings, and their animal friends. These captivating characters and the activities in which they engage are visual embodiments of adult introspection, childhood dreams and fears, and simple, unabashed escapism, themes Nina often confronts in her work. From both her canvas and sculptural pieces emerge a vision of another, more spectacular, world, albeit one with a distinctly Brazilian sensibility.

Nina’s perspective is enhanced by opulently employed symbolism, allowing for multiple readings of each piece. Whilst she is not directed inspired by the contemporary Asian school, certain stylistic features of her work and the technical expertise with which she executes them position her alongside the best practitioners of the Kaikai Kiki school.

Nina first began to paint on the streets at age twelve and since then has become one of a select group of artists who have eased the transition of this art form into galleries and museums. Nina’s local and international success serves as an inspiration to the generations of young female painters and graffiti artists who follow in her footsteps. She continues to live and work in São Paulo.

As with the work of her husband and brother in law (the duo, Os Gemeos), it is the simple magic that exists in Nina’s work that draws us in. All three artists possess an innate ability to transport us to a place that, whilst drawing upon the life we live, is much happier, brighter and devoid of the pressures that so often weigh us down. This place is one we can escape to and immerse ourselves in simply by gazing at their pieces, then come away with a more tranquil understanding of why things are the way they are.

The three Pandolfos are intelligent without affectation, kind without condescension, and positive without pretending that there aren’t things wrong with the world. This is the underlying connection between the Pandolfos, and yet superficially their work couldn’t be more different. Nina’s characters and the landscape she constructs have a very different flavor. Her sophisticated mélange of surrealist motifs, craftsmanship that is as polished as the best in the Asian contemporary movement, and passionate acknowledgment of Brazil’s colorful street scene create a style that is uniquely her own.

Nina’s presentation of youth and the female form is also very special. Her trademark characters symbolize a return to innocence, to the core of our natural, dreamlike state. Close to bursting with exuberance, these beautiful girls and their dreamy world capture a lightness that exists in all of us, even if we cannot always reach it.