Fishermen and schools of fish merge in 13 new paintings at Manu Gomez‘s debut solo exhibition, opening March 25 at Centro Cultural Correios Rio de Janeiro.
À beira-mar, somos muitos — translated as At the Seaside, We Are Many — opens on March 25, 2026 at 4 PM, with free admission. Curated by Jean Carlos Azuos, the show brings together 13 paintings made between 2025 and 2026 alongside a central installation, drawn from Gomez’s ongoing series Sonhos dos Invisíveis (Dreams of the Invisible).
Family memory as a starting point
Gomez draws on personal history to shape her visual language. Inspired by her father’s experience with spearfishing in Arraial do Cabo, she creates compositions where human bodies and fish blur into a single collective flow. Schools of fish become more than animals — they stand as visual metaphors for the strength of community and the survival strategies that groups build together.
The idea of quantity comes alongside a biological strategy: grouping together to appear as a larger animal than you are. By joining humans and fish, I also propose a reflection on how the system reduces us to commodities, to numbers — fish and humans alike.
The statement, by Manu Gomez herself, captures the conceptual core of the exhibition. Vivid colors, bodies in motion, and dense compositions define a body of work that simultaneously evokes memory, labor, and resistance.
The large-scale panel and puzzle logic
On the gallery’s back wall, 24 canvases form a 2.20 x 3.80m panel that the artist describes as a puzzle. Some fragments connect; others remain deliberately displaced, producing a fragmented collective image. Curator Jean Carlos Azuos writes that “the schools of fish move through the canvases like collective thought in motion and, as they repeat from painting to painting, they ripple a visual continuity that the installation follows, guiding the viewer through a flow that evokes the circulation of the tide.”
The work also reflects on the moment when productive life begins to organize daily routine — often replacing play and freedom — a thread that runs through the entire exhibition.
Everyday objects as support and symbol
Two material elements deepen the show’s layers of meaning. A hand cart — used daily by the artist’s father and grandfather in their work — enters the gallery as a physical support for one of the paintings. The choice references the Brazilian expression vender o peixe (“to sell the fish,” meaning to promote oneself), connecting family memory, labor, and the circulation of images.
Several paintings also incorporate tin cans into their compositions, evoking processed foods and everyday consumption in subsistence contexts. By bringing these objects into the field of painting, Gomez draws fishing, labor, and consumer culture into a single visual field.
About the artist
Manu Gomez is a visual artist from Rio de Janeiro and a student at the School of Fine Arts at UFRJ. Her research addresses racial issues and investigates narratives of Black protagonism in the construction of Brazil. She is the author of the series Escurecendo a História de Quem Criou o Brasil (Darkening the History of Those Who Built Brazil) and is currently developing Sonhos dos Invisíveis. She has participated in DAFÉ at LADoB and the 22nd exhibition at the Museu de Ribeirão Preto.
Event info
Manu Gomez — À beira-mar, somos muitos (At the Seaside, We Are Many)
Curator: Jean Carlos Azuos
Opening: March 25, 2026, 4–8 PM
Dates: March 25 – May 9, 2026 | Tuesday to Saturday, noon to 7 PM
Venue: Centro Cultural Correios Rio de Janeiro
Address: Rua Visconde de Itaboraí, 20, Centro, Rio de Janeiro – RJ
Free admission | All ages welcome
Photo: Press release
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