Sandra Cinto. Prelude for the Sun and the Stars

With “Prelude for the Sun and the Stars”, Sandra Cinto transforms Exhibition Hall C at the Es Baluard Museu into a place suspended between time, matter and perception: a space that does not impose itself, but rather envelops the viewer in an expanded landscape that invites pause, listening and contemplation. The site-specific installation, constructed from drawings, lines and rhythm, generates an immersive experience as part of a sensory journey.

Sandra Cinto has been one of Brazil’s most outstanding artists since the 1990s, and has gained international recognition for her mastery of drawing and painting, as well as her versatility in working with various media. From monumental murals to delicate small-format paintings, wooden or ceramic sculptures, installations with paper, objects-book and even furniture objects, her work is characterised by a unique visual language, rich in symbolism and portraying lyrical landscapes and narratives that oscillate between symbolic projection, fantasy and reality.

The exhibition unfolds across three areas that are connected through drawing and interact with each other, creating an enveloping experience as well as generating environments for hope and transformation. The first is an installation composed of large-scale canvases that occupy a significant portion of the exhibition space, evoking the seven seas—an allusion to the complexity of travel and displacement in contemporary society. The other two spaces feature two large murals: one is golden, alluding to a luminous, open, metaphysical landscape without borders, while the other is dark blue, suggesting night, silence and introspection. These surfaces, far from being simple backgrounds, are transformed into emotional architecture where drawing becomes a symbolic, poetic field, and both light and water act as metaphors for the passing of time, which transforms everything in their path.

For Cinto, drawing transcends two-dimensionality and expands harmoniously into the space, connecting the different parts of the installation through its strokes. Perception here is not only visual: the viewer moves through a multisensory environment that enhances the experience, helping to enter an intimate atmosphere and align with the drawn universe. The exhibition is presented as a refuge that invites pause, silence and reflection, a space-time where the body listens, breathes and inhabits the work.

The exhibition offers a journey through different stages that reposition the viewer, catalysing the micro and the macro in a single experience: from the intimate and corporeal to the cosmic and universal. Turbulent seas and starry skies are intertwined with the museum’s architecture, generating an illusion of expansion. The structuring of stages connects the body, the spirit and the cosmos in a shared trip that encourages us to recognise and empathise with the journeys of others, which is a collective, human experience. Sandra’s work flows, inviting us to intuitively enter the world of dreams and symbols, where anything is possible, while offering a sensitive and urgent interpretation of the present. With pieces charged with symbolism and memory, her work calls us to see, imagine and hope together.

 

Sandra Cinto (Santo André, São Paulo, Brazil, 1968) studied Fine Arts at the Faculdades Integradas Teresa D’Ávila, in Santo André. She received scholarships from the Cité internationale des arts, Paris (2000–2001) and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2005). She currently lives and works in São Paulo.

Since the early 1990s, Cinto has presented her work in museums and institutions around the world, including major solo exhibitions at Fondation Hermès, Tokyo (2020); Instituto Itaú Cultural, São Paulo (2020); Dallas Museum of Art (2019–2020); Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2017); USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, Florida (2015); CAAM Centro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (2014); Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2010); MAC Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Gas Natural Fenosa, A Coruña (2007); Projeto Parede at MAM Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2003); and Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte (2003).

Among her projects and public commissions around the world, the most notable recent ones are Prelude to Dream & Melody for the Stars I and II, at Teatro Cultura Artística, São Paulo (2024); Let Freedom Ring, at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center in Washington D. C. (2023); The Wishes Boulevard, at Thailand Biennale 2021, Korat (2021); Open Seascape, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York (2019); and One Day, After the Rain, at The Phillips Collection, Washington D. C. (2012–2013).

Her works are part of prominent collections, such as those of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Pinacoteca Municipal de São Paulo; Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais; and Fundación ARCO, Madrid.