Thiago Prado is a multi-artist, trained as a communicator, and has a postgraduate degree in Cinema. Born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, he moved to São Paulo at the age of thirty, where he held his first exhibitions. He returned to Rio four years later, where he works in his studio on Flamengo Beach. He won awards from the Museu Casa de Portinari (2024) for his digital photography "Travessias" and from the 10th International Visual Arts Salon SINAP/AIAP (2020) for his digital art work "Tus Labios". He won the Best Short Documentary award at the South Film and Arts Academy Festival (Chile, 2017) for his film "Olhar Nisete Sampaio" - about the renowned master of Abstract Expressionism. He has participated in exhibitions in Santiago, Paris, Barcelona, Varkaus, Turin, London and Lisbon. He is the author of the books "Mal secreto" (Labrador publisher) and "Que será, será" (Opera Editorial).
How did your journey into the art world begin?
I started drawing when I was very young and never stopped. Due to social conditions, despite my early interest in photography and cinema, I only had access to my own camera, which was already digital, when I started working. I started painting at the age of nineteen when I started a free course with the teacher Nisete Sampaio, and was later invited to be her assistant.
What themes do you prefer to explore in your works?
Social, political, sexual, and technological issues. Not always separately. I like to put on the screen what bothers me or inspires me, in short, what somehow provokes me and that I believe can provoke others because it is at the heart of life.
What is your creative process like?
I usually work with what is around me, with my daily life. Without making distinctions between real or digital life. It can be news, street graffiti records, memes. I deconstruct these ready-made images and use them as my paints to paint a new image from their traces. The results are abstract works with traces of figurative art.
Who are the artistic influences that have impacted your work?
My teacher Nisete Sampaio, who taught me to work using the union between my expressiveness from the unconscious and the coincidences in creations. Pop art, mainly Andy Warhol. The video art of Nam June Paik. Also Euro SR, Basquiat, Tàpies, Pollock, Helmut Newton, Vivian Maier and Keith Haring's concept of the accessibility of art for people from different levels of society.
What is the meaning of art in your life?
Art is my way of communicating with the world. Of challenging and being challenged.
What is the role of the artist in today's society?
I believe that, unlike other activities, the role of the artist is fluid. It is a cultural invention according to the society in which he or she lives. There are times when the artist needs to talk about dystopias and other times when he or she needs to point out utopias. There was a time when painters, for example, had to portray reality faithfully. Meanwhile, with technological transformations, we went through impressionism and abstractionism.
Have you participated in any notable exhibitions that you would like to share?
The solo exhibition "em fluxo" (2022) curated by Filipe Chagas that I presented here in Rio de Janeiro was an opportunity to show the technical possibilities of digital art, such as the diversity of size and support, whether with printing or projection on screens. I also highlight the exhibition at the Museo Palacio Postal in Mexico City (2024-2025), where I was able to talk with other Latin American artists and several visitors about the idea of what it means to be Latin American - directly dialoguing with the concept of the work itself that I called "Decolonial Windows".
