Flexa Gallery opens its 2026 exhibition programme with the group show Carnavalizar: Method and Invention, which opens on 11 February in Rio de Janeiro. Curated by Daniela Avellar, the exhibition brings together artists from different generations to reflect on Brazilian carnival as an inventive practice, a form of knowledge, and a political gesture.
Starting from the idea of “carnavalizar” as a verb, the exhibition presents carnival not merely as a festival, but as an action capable of reorganising bodies, spaces, and ways of living together. The show recognises festivity as a practice forged primarily within urban Black communities, marked by method, its own intelligence, and a historical response to various forms of violence. Rather than taking a documentary approach, the group exhibition explores carnival as an almost abstract state, connecting rhythms, the materialities of celebration, collective bodily experiences, and vernacular architectures.
Among the highlights of the exhibition is Mulambö’s painting A Sossego ainda desfila (2025), which evokes the memory of Acadêmicos do Sossego, a samba school from Niterói (RJ) founded in the 1960s, of which the artist’s grandmother was a member, and which closed in 2022. The work depicts the costume of a porta-bandeira carrying the school’s flag, bringing together recurring references in the artist’s career, such as Bandeira Mulamba (2019), Ourubu (2021), and Praia da Vila in Saquarema, where Mulambö lives and works.
By turning his own trajectory into the narrative of an extinct samba school, Mulambö constructs a fictitious parade that keeps alive the collective memory of the group and the relationships formed around it. The movement of the porta-bandeira, between life and passion, symbolises this continuous cycle between past and present, tree and fruit, making carnival a space of continuity and reinvention.
The exhibition also features the work of Ayrson Heráclito, who presents the watercolour Abebé com Grelha de Tempo (2024), a piece from his iconic Juntó series, which investigates Afro-Atlantic legacies through the cosmogony of the orixás.
Info
Carnavalizar: Method and Invention
Curated by: Daniela Avellar
Opening: Wednesday, 11 February 2026, 6pm–9pm
Flexa | R. Dias Ferreira, 214 – Leblon, Rio de Janeiro
www.flexagaleria.com
