Brazilian artist's anti-colonialism work resonates with Chinese audience

Requiem, a large-scale oil painting in Gallery 7 depicts 13 black children mourning a deceased girl at a table full of the quinoa bread that black families consume daily. The scene is evocative of Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper featuring Jesus with his 12 white disciples.

Preaching, a wall-bound installation made of 20,000 steel nails forming a square, stuns audiences.

Steel nails and other iron objects such as horseshoes, were used as an ex-voto, an offering to the gods as thanks for the fulfilment of vows. Yet it was the enslaved Africans who brought the iron smelting technology to South America. However, iron chains and fetters were then made by colonists to confine the bodies of the slaves, said Rao.

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