The work of Kika Carvalho, a Brazilian artist

Work by artist from Espírito Santo is part of a collection exhibited in the United States

Painting by Kika Carvalho is part of a permanent collection considered one of the most important of Latin American works in the United States
Washington DC - The art gallery in the American capital had a line for the opening of the exhibition. Right at the entrance, on the right side, a colorful canvas stood out. The acrylic painting shows a black woman, with her skin painted all blue, leaning on a yellow Brasilia with the hood open and parked on a beach.

“The work by Kika Carvalho, a Brazilian artist, is one of the most recent acquisitions in the collection. It is a matter of pride to have incorporated Kika Carvalho into the collection”, says Julieta Maroni, curator of the exhibition “The safe: treasures from the IDB art collection” that was open to the public at the end of October in the American capital. Nominated for the PIPA Prize in 2021 and 2023, Kika Carvalho has a degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Espírito Santo – UFES. The author of murals that have appeared on the streets of cities such as São Paulo, Kika is a social educator and her work is permanently exhibited in the Inter-American Development Bank building. The sixty works exhibited in Washington DC are part of a larger, permanent collection of the IDB, which is headquartered in the capital of the United States. “The idea was to take this art collection that has been here in Washington DC since 1992 and take it off the walls of our building and offer it to the city of Washington,” says Trinidad Zaldivar, Head of Culture and Creativity. One of the most important collections of Latin American art and in the United States, the collection features works by new artists and others with a long career, such as Venezuelans Jesus Rafael Soto, Carlos Cruz-Diez and Colombian Olga Amaral, a textile and visual artist known for her large-scale abstract fiber creations.