Fabiana Lopes 2023 Mellon Fellow

Fabiana Lopes is a New York and São Paulo–based independent curator, writer and Ph.D. candidate in Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. In 2020, she served as Adjunct Curator for Mercosul Biennial 12 in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Her research centers on the contemporary production of artists of the African diaspora in Brazil and in the Americas, with special attention paid to Black performance. Her writings have appeared in Cadernos Pagu, Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art, Harper’s Bazaar Art, O Menelick 2o Ato, ARTE!Brasileiros, Contemporary And (C&), and in exhibition catalogs such as Feminine(s): visualities, actions and affections, (Mercosul Biennial 12, Porto Alegre, 2020), PIPA Prize (2020), Rosana Paulino: The Sewing of Memory (Pinacoteca, São Paulo, 2018), Lucia Laguna: Neighborhood, (MASP, São Paulo, 2018), Of Darkness and Of Light (Minnette Vári, Johannesburg, 2016), Territories: Artists of African Descent at Pinacoteca’s Collection, (Pinacoteca, São Paulo, 2015).

As part of her residency as a Hemi Mellon Predoctoral Fellow, she will draw upon her long-term research on Black performance in Brazil, to build archival collections around the work of Brazilian artists Ricardo Aleixo and Ayrson Heráclito in the Hemispheric Institute Digital Video Library (HIDVL).