In a world saturated with noise and speed, Thiago Barbalho’s latest exhibition, Chants, offers a pause—a sacred, visual breath. Hosted at Elizabeth Xi Bauer Gallery in Deptford, the show invites viewers into an intricate realm of symbols, language, and layered meaning. We sat down with Thiago to explore the philosophy, ritual, and rebellion behind his meditative works.
Your exhibition Chants explores visual language as a form of spiritual communication. What inspired this direction?
I believe that visual language, like any other language, results from the flow of a multitude of events and disturbances into an order, a specific translation. In this sense, I use visual language to evoke previously unseen yet deeply present and real meanings and open myself to overwhelming sensations that transcend reality, ultimately forming a composition of multiple patterns in possible arrangements. This is why the word spirit, by its meaning and etymology, refers to a very subtle yet vigorous “breath” and the courage needed to blow it. Visual language here then becomes the key to communicating the previously incommunicable.
You describe drawing as an “ancestral technology.” How does this concept reshape the way you approach your materials and practice?
The word “technology” refers to a skill and a sense. Drawing, at its core, is a deliberate gesture. As this deliberate gesture repeats itself and gives life to new possible worlds, it reveals itself as a technique that finds its own meaning and unfolds the meanings of reality. A human-made stroke has existed since the dawn of humanity, and sometimes I think it was through scribbling on a surface with a tool that the first spark of human consciousness emerged—when the person who made the mark realised they could do it, and do it again. There, they discovered the idea of decision and choice, of the visible and the invisible, and that the stroke gave them access to new paths to their mysteries. From this came cave paintings and alphabets. When I pick up a pencil and paper to draw today, I reconnect with that astonishing moment of opening and closing myself to everything within me that drives the decision to create, reflect, and make art. It is a powerful technology that we can still practice today, exposing the senses of being alive today and seeing the world as it is today, with all its complexities, memories, celebrations, traumas, and speculations.
Your works feel like meditative puzzles—fragments of language and imagery that resist easy decoding. What role does ambiguity play in your art?
I love the idea of ambiguity because it is the richness and fertility of not seeing an end, but only possible paths. This is the nature of philosophical speculation that brought us here, and this is the nature of our days, our astonishment, our insistence. At the same time, fragments of languages, symbols, and colours can unite and serve as a form of rest. It’s like when we see that in the middle of a lake, a bird has gathered debris and remnants to make its nest and resting place. The visual work in its ambiguity can both astonish and disturb, and contemplate, appreciate, pause, and focus amidst a hyper-stimulating world.
How has your background in philosophy, law, and metaphysics influenced the layered symbolism in Chants?
These interdisciplinary formations resonate in the work because, when the drawings are made or the exhibition decisions are taken, our life repertoire comes into play and shows its service. The philosophy background might be the most evident regarding the search for truth and critical formation. I also studied anthropology and psychology, which guided my research and experiences across different cultures, social classes, and communities, each revealing a rich overlap of symbols, themes, and languages. Perhaps this is why my work is referred to as hyper-contemporary – due to the overlapping of references and narrative fragmentation in a kind of world where, due to so many stimuli, everything inhabits the same surface. It’s not so different, for example, from the logic of TikTok’s algorithm.
In a culture addicted to speed and instant consumption, Chants demands slowness. Why is this ‘slow looking’ so important to you?
There is an intense demand for deep relationships in a world that, in the opposite sense, is anxious and fast, addicted to intensity. I also miss these deep connections in the way my work is received. When I present something to the world, I hope that the world embraces it in a network of exchange. But often, the pace of events overwhelms any attempt at critical construction. So, I wanted to transform this dissatisfaction into energy for the work, to create series that discussed this, that inverted the phallocentric and obedient logic of making significant, shocking works, to instead blow the invitation to a subtle, slow approach, like fireflies that insist on fulfilling their small luminosity in a world in environmental collapse. The works invite surrender, as if the viewer could disarm themselves and find contemplation in something made, paradoxically, of accumulation, like fireflies observed through cracks within the shell of our hands.
Your art blends Brazil’s vibrant visual heritage with pop culture and personal ritual. How do these seemingly contrasting elements coexist in your work?
When you grow up in the outskirts of Brazil, these things do not contrast at all. They coexist daily. Pop culture invades our routine through television, school, streets, and the internet and becomes part of our aesthetic formation. What we do with it is the issue. Where I grew up, pop culture coexisted with religious rituals and beliefs, local violence, explored and visited landscapes, intense light, the sea, predatory tourism, and ancestral family legacies. It was a matter of embracing all these disparate formations, just like my academic formation and interests.
The exhibition title suggests something sacred or performative—what does the idea of a ‘chant’ mean to you, visually and spiritually?
Yes, I thought of chants as celebratory prayers, meditative, or as poems that evoke specific themes according to the moment’s need, often in a tone of praise and devotion. And “chant” is the core word of “enchantment.” That which is enchanted. My process of creating these drawings involves the same rhythm of poetry. The chants are poems. In my studio, which is in a shack in the middle of the Atlantic Forest, I can maintain concentration, isolation, and immersion as a perpetuation of trance and access techniques. The Shipibo people of the Peruvian Amazon have the Icaros—improvised songs performed in rituals, shaped by the interaction between plants, the natural world, and the individuals being treated by the shaman. Artisans often translate these songs into visual patterns, creating drawings that correspond to the melodies. These are acts of collective authorship. I drew from these ideas of repetition, shared creation between the artist and the environment, and the evolving themes that arise over time. I also explored the possibility of composing visual arrangements that resemble poems on a book page—as if the wall were a page, the artwork a poem, and the world a book in which we read the foreground elements, one poem at a time.
You’ve shown work across Brazil, the UK, and beyond. How does presenting in London, and particularly at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, shape your artistic dialogue?
This is the third time I’ve had works exhibited in London, but it’s my first solo exhibition in a gallery. EXB has an extensive dialogue programme with Latin American artists which makes me feel respected in my decisions and viewpoint, while also connecting me with other emerging artists from around the world. The UK has received my work quite well, as there is seriousness in reflecting on the themes it evokes, both in terms of material and techniques, as well as in the repertoire of images and their socio-political and cultural context. At the same time, London is a global epicentre of contemporary art, and being here exposes me, to galleries, museums, and architecture, to artistic languages I could never have conceived in my imagination. This includes the architectural landscapes, which are shocking to me. But it also includes the lexicon of consumer icons, brands, ads, and design. It’s a very stimulating exchange, and one that keeps maturing.
