Beacon Gallery is pleased to announce its selection to show at the 15^th edition of Aqua Art Miami, as part of Miami’s Art Week. Boston-based Beacon Gallery will be featuring a solo show by Brazilian-Italian artist (and Massachusetts resident) Raquel Fornasaro. 

Fornasaro’s work spans many media, from sculpture to digital collage and photography to her highly symbolic Zoomorph series, which will be featured at Aqua. This superbly rendered series features children with the heads of animals, and draws from two main sources of inspiration: Egyptian gods and the Brazilian folkloric tradition of the Curupira.

The concept of a masked character, or a human with the head of an animal was inspired by ancient Egyptian deities, such as Anubis, the god of death, who had the head of a canine and the body of a human.

The Curupira is a demonic mythological entity in Brazilian Folklore. The Curupira is thought to prey on poachers and hunters who take more than what they need from the forest. He is seen as an evil being with noble but vindictive goals of protecting the environment and its creatures.

Fornasaro’s pieces often have an environmental or political angle. For instance, 2018’s Trophy Hunting makes direct reference back to the infamous 2011 photograph of Donald Trump Jr. holding the tail of an elephant from a hunting safari in Africa. Fornasaro’s most recently completed work, Brumadinho, is also a masterpiece of symbolism and commentary on Brazilian current events. In this work she specifically addresses the Brumadinho disaster where a dam owned by the mining company Vale S.A. failed, leading to a catastrophic mudslide and the deaths of hundreds of individuals, animals and untold destruction.

Beacon Gallery owner Christine O’Donnell states, “Raquel Fornasaro is an extremely talented artist and I’m extremely excited to show her work at Aqua Art Miami. The themes she paints, the vibrant colors she uses, as well as the originality of her work make it eye-catching and always the subject of discussion.”

About Raquel Fornasaro:

Born in São Paulo, Brazil (1981). Living in Boston, Massachusetts.

After earning a BA in Advertising from the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), Fornasaro moved to the US where she attended the Fine Arts program at the Corcoran School of Art+Design in Washington, DC. Currently living in Boston, Fornasaro’s work is part of multiple private collections and has been exhibited at galleries, universities, and museums including the MIT Media Lab and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.