Brazilian artist Agrade Camíz has been selected for The Artsy Vanguard 2026, recognizing her as one of the most promising contemporary artists poised to become a future leader in art and culture. The Rio de Janeiro-based painter, who began her artistic journey through graffiti in the city's favelas, has gained international recognition for her powerful works that blend urban architecture with intimate portraits of Black bodies and social commentary.
Camíz's path to artistic recognition was unconventional. Growing up in Jacaré, one of Rio de Janeiro's largest low-income, predominantly Black communities, she never imagined becoming an artist. "From her perspective as a child, art was a distant prospect," she recalls. Her artistic awakening came when her cousin taught her how to tag graffiti, leading her to mark the city as her own. She joined local graffiti artists she met at MC battles, working primarily with men in what she describes as a "really machista (chauvinist) and really competitive" environment with hardly any grafiteiras (female graffiti artists).
Despite attending art school, Camíz credits the streets with shaping her artistic identity. "The streets really made me the artist I am today," she told Artsy during a visit to her studio in Rio's bustling city center. "It's a very democratic space, and it's given my art a collective basis." This sensitivity to the urban environment—its architecture, intimacy, and richness—now informs all her work, creating paintings that combine suburban architectural elements like grates, patios, and domestic decorations with portraits captured in intimate yet often eerily abstract surroundings.
Her meteoric rise in the local art scene has been remarkable since 2021. Represented by A Gentil Carioca gallery, she has had three solo exhibitions—one in São Paulo and two in Rio de Janeiro. This year marked her international debut at Paris's Grand Palais in "Horizontes: Brazilian contemporary art unveiled," a painting exhibition organized by Brazilian artist and A Gentil Carioca co-founder Ernesto Neto. She is now moving from her cozy studio in the city's historic center to a brighter, more spacious atelier.
However, her seemingly rapid ascent follows over 20 years of developing her craft, often while struggling financially. During the height of the pandemic in 2021, she was living and working in a squat called Palacette dos Amores (Mansion of Loves). "They were my best and my worst of times," Camíz reflected. "Best in terms of producing a lot of great work, but also the worst, because I was broke, and generally in a tough place."
Camíz's work is characterized by its brutal yet tender exploration of difficult environments, with settings fraught with physical and emotional peril. In her 2021 painting "Homens amam baby beef" (Men love baby beef), red paint trickles down between a black-and-white wedge, resembling blood and underwear in an otherwise bright geometric composition. The title creates a startling metaphor connecting a specific cut of meat in Brazil known for its softness with the sexual abuse of minors.
Other works create more subtle associations between harm and protection, fear and tenderness. "Brasileirinhas II" (2024) takes a provocative, voyeuristic angle looking down on a woman's body as she sunbathes in her backyard, with the sense of danger countered by the peaceful domestic setting. Many of her canvases are divided into sections or crisscrossed by lines, as if seen through railings that keep the viewer at a distance.
Her breakthrough came in 2020 when graffiti collective Rua Walls invited her to paint an outdoor mural in Rio's port. She created the phrase "Sonho do amor próprio" (Dream of self-love), remixing the popular saying "sonho da casa propria" (dream of one's own house). "Every Brazilian dreams of owning a home, because we have so many housing problems. But I wanted to speak of self-love, which has to do with how, in our city, we celebrate many things from other cultures but few that come from here," she explained.
The work's resonance led to her introduction to A Gentil Carioca gallerists in 2021 through artist Aleta Valente, who also lived at Palacete dos Amores. By then, Camíz had begun painting on canvas, depicting not only Jacaré's social housing but also women's bodies, exploring sensitive themes including prostitution and sexual abuse. "Painting plays with subjectivity, creating a sense of hide-and-seek, so it's a good place to address painful themes," she noted.
Her first solo exhibition at A Gentil Carioca, titled "Abusada" (Abused) in 2021, explored themes of abuse and protection. Her "Self-portrait" (2021) depicted her own body in electric pink with a large pattern-like mark in her flesh. For her 2023 installation "Última forma" (Ultimate form), she repurposed wooden signs common in suburban Brazilian homes, burning shaming phrases like "dirty child" and "silence" onto them—words taken from her own memories of sexual abuse or shared by other abused women. The installation included a video of her lighting 1,000 candles as a symbol of protection for the future.
Her photographic series "Após a curva vire à esquerda" (After the curve, turn left) (2023) was inspired by Rio women's custom of sticking black tape onto their bodies like bikinis to create tan lines. "[Visible tan lines] has always been part of the aesthetics of the favela, but when women started setting up businesses [for artificial tanning], it became part of a micro-economy and a symbol of empowerment of Black women entrepreneurs," she explained. With an artist friend, she invited women to a salon in Baixa do Sapateiro to pose for abstract photographs while tanning.
Social and racial critique appears throughout her work, particularly addressing Rio's gentrification. Her triptych "Cheat Retreat" (2022) shows a black-green swarm of spots infiltrating a sprawling yellow-white landscape, depicting how her community has been treated during the city's development. "There were complaints that we crowded the beaches, turning them ugly," she said, with the work geometrically delineating zones of exclusion.
Similarly, "Leblon de 474" (2021) references an upscale Rio neighborhood and bus number 474, which brings bathers from poor communities in Jacaré. "It's a moment of leisure for us, but it represents chaos to the people living in the rich areas of Rio," Camíz observed, noting the heavy policing the bus faces. She represents this tension through vibrant yet disjointed geometric shapes where asphalt wedges into land and urban architecture appears impossibly jumbled.
Not all her work addresses dark themes. She also celebrates the sensual beauty of local architectural vernacular to commemorate her community, Black women, and herself. In the abstract self-portrait "Bem nascida" (Well born) (2023), grates take on remarkably fluid, floral shapes echoed in curvy arabesque forms. "As a decorative element, not a utilitarian one, it denotes pleasure rather than a need for safety. It even looks like the reproductive system of a woman," she explained.
Her latest painting, "Grains de beauté perpétuels" (2025), recently shown at the Grand Palais, exalts humble bamboo beads used for curtains in many community homes. The beads trickle down the painting, leading viewers through pulsating realms of scarlet-reds and cobalt-blues. As her career takes off, Camíz feels increasingly comfortable in her practice. "We pass through so many moments in painting when it feels like we're drowning—our whole life," she reflected. "But now I'm finding myself. I'm in a good place."
The Artsy Vanguard, now in its eighth year, highlights the most promising artists working today. As 2026 approaches, the program celebrates 10 talents positioned to become future leaders of contemporary art and culture, with Camíz representing the transformative power of street art evolving into gallery recognition while maintaining its social consciousness and community roots.
