Growing up, Agrade Camíz never thought she would become an artist. From her perspective as a child in Jacaré—one of Rio de Janeiro’s largest low-income, predominantly Black communities—art was a distant prospect. But then, one day, her cousin taught her how to tag graffiti, and she began to mark the city as her own. She met graffiti artists at local MC battles and joined them. She worked mostly with men, since there were hardly any grafiteiras.
“It was tough, really machista (chauvinist), and really competitive, but when you’re passionate about something, you just do it,” she said, during a visit to her studio in Rio’s bustling city center, buzzing with street vendors. “It’s very different today, when women rule some of the scene.”
Even though she went to art school, Camíz recently told Artsy that the streets really made her the artist she is today. “It’s a very democratic space, and it’s given my art a collective basis,” she said. This sensitivity to the urban environment—its architecture, intimacy, and richness— informs all her work. Her paintings combine elements of suburban architecture, such as grates (a recurring motif), patios, and domestic indoor decorations, alongside portraits of Black bodies, captured in surroundings that feel intimate yet often eerily abstract. In this way, Camíz reimagines the world around her, both celebrating its distinct features and offering social critique.
Her recent rise in the local art scene has been meteoric. She’s had three solo exhibitions at A Gentil Carioca gallery, which represents her, since 2021 (one in São Paulo and two in Rio de Janeiro). This year, she has also shown abroad: at Paris’s Grand Palais in “Horizontes: Brazilian contemporary art unveiled,” a painting exhibition organized by Brazilian artist (and A Gentil Carioca co-founder) Ernesto Neto. Now, she is moving from her cozy studio in the city’s historic center to a brighter, more spacious atelier.
Though her ascent might seem quick, the artist has been developing her craft for over 20 years, often struggling to make ends meet. In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, she was living and working in a squat, baroquely named Palacette dos Amores (Mansion of Loves). “They were my best and my worst of times,” Camíz said. “Best in terms of producing a lot of great work, but also the worst, because I was broke, and generally in a tough place.”
In Camíz’s brutal yet tender work, there’s often a sense of being in (or coming from) a difficult environment. Her settings are fraught with physical and emotional peril. In the painting Homens amam baby beef (Men love baby beef) (2021), for instance, red paint trickles down between a black-and-white wedge, resembling blood and underwear respectively, in an otherwise bright geometric composition. The work’s title and its violent association between a specific cut of meat in Brazil (“baby beef”), known for its softness, and the sexual abuse of minors is a startling metaphor.
Agrade Camíz, Brasileirinhas II, 2024. Photo by Pedro Agilson. Courtesy of the artist and A Gentil Carioca.
Other works create more subtle associations between harm and protection, fear and tenderness. Brasileirinhas II (2024), for example, takes a provocative, voyeuristic angle looking down on a woman’s body as she sunbathes in her backyard. This sense of danger is countered by the peaceful domestic setting.
Camíz’s first big break came in 2020, when graffiti collective Rua Walls invited her to paint an outdoor mural in Rio’s port. She graffitied the phrase “Sonho do amor próprio” (Dream of self-love), remixing a popular saying, “sonho da casa propria” (dream of one’s own house). “Every Brazilian dreams of owning a home, because we have so many housing problems. But I wanted to speak of self-love, which has to do with how, in our city, we celebrate many things from other cultures but few that come from here,” she said.
Agrade Camíz, O Sonho do Amor Próprio, 2023. Courtesy of Agrade Camíz.
The work resonated. In 2021, she was introduced to her now gallerists at A Gentil Carioca through artist Aleta Valente, who also lived at Palacete dos Amores. By then, Camíz had begun to paint on canvas, depicting not only Jacaré’s social housing, but also women’s bodies, delving into sensitive, even taboo themes, such as prostitution and sexual abuse. “Painting plays with subjectivity, creating a sense of hide-and-seek, so it’s a good place to address painful themes,” she said.
Many paintings in her first solo show at A Gentil Carioca, “Abusada” (Abused), in 2021, explored the themes of abuse and protection. In Self-portrait (2021), she depicted her own body in electric pink, with a large pattern-like mark in her flesh. Her canvases are often divided into sections, or crisscrossed by lines, as if seen through railings that keep the viewer at a distance.
Agrade Camíz, Self-portrait, 2021. Courtesy of the artist and A Gentil Carioca.
For her 2023 installation at A Gentil Carioca, Última forma (Ultimate form), she repurposed wooden signs common in suburban Brazilian homes into remnants of trauma. Though they’re usually inscribed with religious mottos, Camíz instead burned shaming phrases onto them, such as “dirty child,” and “silence.” These were taken from her own memory of sexual abuse, or shared with her by other abused women. As part of the installation, she also showed a video, which captured her lighting 1,000 candles—a symbol of protection for the future.
Her photographic series “Após a curva vire à esquerda” (After the curve, turn left) (2023) was inspired by the custom of women in Rio to stick black tape “bikinis” onto their bodies, creating tan lines. “[Visible tan lines] has always been part of the aesthetics of the favela, but when women started setting up businesses [for artificial tanning], it became part of a micro-economy and a symbol of empowerment of Black women entrepreneurs,” she said.
With an artist friend, Camíz invited women to a salon in Baixa do Sapateiro to pose for photographs while tanning. “I didn’t want to do photographs merely as a record, but rather as something abstract, close to my paintings, so that you wouldn’t necessarily recognize which part of the body you’re seeing,” she added.
Such nuanced interplay between abstract and everyday motifs underpins all her work. In the triptych Cheat Retreat (2022), a black-green swarm of spots infiltrates the sprawling yellow-white landscape. Camíz said the work depicts how her community has been treated throughout Rio’s gentrification: “There were complaints that we crowded the beaches, turning them ‘ugly.’” The work offers a social and racial critique, raising questions of access, by geometrically delineating the zones of exclusion.
Agrade Camíz, Cheat Retreat, 2022 . Photo by Pedro Agilson. Courtesy of the artist and A Gentil Carioca.
This exclusion is also evoked in the painting Leblon de 474 (2021). The title refers to an upscale neighborhood in Rio, and the number “474” stands for the bus bringing bathers from the poor communities in Camíz’s native Jacaré. “It’s a moment of leisure for us, but it represents chaos to the people living in the rich areas of Rio,” Camíz said, noting the heavy policing that this bus is subject to. To underscore the jarring dissonance between leisure and danger, she paints vibrant yet disjointed geometric shapes: Asphalt is wedged into land, and urban architecture is shown impossibly jumbled.
Not all of her work takes on such dark themes. She also turns to the local architectural vernacular to highlight its sensual beauty—to commemorate her community, Black women, and herself. In the abstract self-portrait Bem nascida (Well born) (2023), the grate’s floral shape is remarkably fluid, echoed in many other curvy and arabesque forms. As a decorative element, not a utilitarian one, it denotes pleasure rather than a need for safety. “It even looks like the reproductive system of a woman,” Camíz said.
Agrade Camíz, Leblon de 474, 2021. Photo by Pedro Agilson. Courtesy of the artist and A Gentil Carioca.
Similarly sensual is Grains de beauté perpétuels (2025)—one of Camíz’s latest paintings, which was shown recently at the Grand Palais show. Here, she exalts the humble bamboo beads used for curtains in many homes in her community. The beads trickle down her painting, leading the viewer’s eye through pulsating realms of scarlet-reds and cobalt-blues.
It’s in this phase, as her career takes off, that Camíz is feeling most comfortable in her practice. “We pass through so many moments in painting when it feels like we’re drowning—our whole life,” Camíz said. “But now I’m finding myself. I’m in a good place.”
The Artsy Vanguard 2026
The Artsy Vanguard is now in its eighth year of highlighting the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, we’re celebrating 10 talents poised to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture.
Explore more of The Artsy Vanguard 2026 and browse works by the artists.
Video by Pushpin Films / Kashfi Halford for Artsy.
Thumbnail: Portrait of Agrade Camíz by Kashfi Halford for Artsy, 2025; Agrade Camíz, from left to right: “Farol,” 2025, and “Garotas se vendem/A garota se vendo,” 2024. Courtesy of the artist and A Gentil Carioca.
