Larissa de Souza

Larissa de Souza (b. 1995, São Paulo, Brazil) is a self-taught artist based in São Paulo. Her paintings draw on her experience as an Afro-Brazilian woman, weaving in folklore and folk traditions to explore ancestry, womanhood, and collective memory. Figures appear within pared-back interiors and symbolic settings where walls, thresholds, and domestic objects act as repositories of lived experience. Personal iconography, including floating hands and conch shells, recurs throughout the work, establishing continuity and a sense of world-building. Equally central to her approach is her attention to material and surface, which anchor the imagery in physical presence. De Souza combines acrylic and oil with collage, fabric, found objects, embroidery, and resin frames, introducing raised and textured elements that sit between image and object. These material interventions function as keepsakes on the picture plane, aligning the work with efforts to preserve communal histories against erasure. Rather than resolve into a single narrative, the paintings balance memory and imagination, translating folklore into a contemporary visual language rooted in both communal and personal experience. De Souza has exhibited widely at leading Brazilian institutions, including Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, and Sesc Belenzinho . Her work is held in the collections of the Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), the Museum of Modern Art São Paulo, and the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College. In 2026, she will present a solo exhibition at albertz benda , New York.