Skip to content

Joseph Clark Collection

Antonio Tarsis

Born 1995, Salvador · Collage, assemblage and installation

Antonio Tarsis (born 1995, Salvador, Brazil) makes collages, assemblages and installations from materials he collects on the streets of Salvador, including recycled matchboxes, in work that takes a critical view of colonisation, the Black body and the genocide of the Black population in Brazil. He is represented by Carlos/Ishikawa in London and Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo.

In the collection

About the artist

Antonio Tarsis was born in Salvador, Brazil, in 1995 and lives and works between Salvador, Rio de Janeiro and London (Carlos/Ishikawa). He grew up in the Arraial do Retiro favela in Salvador and began making art at fourteen, and the Bienal de São Paulo describes him as self-taught (36th Bienal de São Paulo).

He collects materials from the streets of the favelas, among them matchboxes, medicine bottles, industrial packaging and electrical components, and recombines them into collages, objects and installations. Akademie Schloss Solitude describes his work as a critical view of colonisation and decolonisation, the Black body and the genocide of the Black population in Brazil (Akademie Schloss Solitude). In 2016 he received the EDP nas Artes award from Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo, which nominated him for a residency at Lugar a Dudas in Cali, Colombia, and he was a Solitude Fellow in Stuttgart in 2020 and 2021 (Akademie Schloss Solitude). He also received the Via Arts Prize from the Embassy of Brazil in London in 2019 (36th Bienal de São Paulo).

His solo exhibitions include Symbolic Genocide (2021) and Storm in a teacup (2024) at Carlos/Ishikawa in London (Carlos/Ishikawa), and recipe for disaster at Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel in São Paulo in 2023, his first show there after the gallery announced it represented him (My Art Guides). For the 36th Bienal de São Paulo in 2025 he made catástrofe orquestra #1 (Ato I), an installation of recycled matchbox panels, drums and coal pendulums (Bienal de São Paulo).

Sources

  1. Carlos/Ishikawa, artist page and CV
  2. Carlos/Ishikawa, Storm in a teacup (20 Sep to 19 Oct 2024)
  3. Carlos/Ishikawa, exhibitions (Symbolic Genocide, 29 May to 3 Jul 2021)
  4. Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel, biography
  5. My Art Guides, recipe for disaster (4 Mar to 15 Apr 2023)
  6. 36th Bienal de São Paulo, artist page
  7. Bienal de São Paulo, Catastrophe orchestra: an interview with Antonio Társis
  8. Akademie Schloss Solitude, fellow profile
A room in the Joseph Clark Collection hung salon-style: framed paintings, drawings and photographs cover two white walls, with sculptures on a teak sideboard and a white plinth below.
Installation view of the Joseph Clark Collection, including works by Zhang Enli, Tamsin Relly, Glenn Ligon, Louise Bourgeois, Ray Parker, Phyllida Barlow, Bengt Rosenström, Antonio Tarsis, Hugo Glendinning, Tim A Shaw, France-Lise McGurn, Mia Chaplin, Fabian Peake and Yukako Shibata.

More from the collection