[ GUEST ARTIST ]

Salvador, BA, Brazil, 1982
Lives and works in São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Tiganá Santana is a Brazilian composer, singer, instrumentalist, poet, music producer, artistic director, curator, researcher, teacher and translator. The multi-artist was the first Brazilian composer in the country’s phonographic history to present an album, as a composer, with songs in African languages. He curated the largest recorded exhibition on Brazilian singer-songwriter D. Ivone Lara, when she turned 94, at the Itaú Cultural Institute in 2015. Between 2022 and 2023, he created the immersive installation “Perder a Imagem” also at Itaú Cultural Institute, in dialogue with the thoughts of writer and historian Beatriz Nascimento. 

He also conceived and presented the soundscapes Um Defeito de Cor I and Um Defeito de Cor II, for the original exhibition at the Rio Art Museum ‘Um Defeito de Cor”, based on the work of the same name by writer Ana Maria Gonçalves. Other projects in that period include the sound work “Reino das Invenções” for Oficina Brennand, in Recife (PE) and the work Ilês, Aiyês, Carnavais e Ancestrais (Ilês, Aiyês, Carnivals and Ancestors) – exhibited as a tribute to Brazil’s first Afro carnival block, Ilê Aiyê (which, by the way, is a significant collection and memory project) at the Festival Novas Frequências, at the Oi Futuro – Art and Technology space, in Rio de Janeiro. In 2010, he performed at the 27th São Paulo Biennial with Professor Maurício Salles de Vasconcelos, from University of São Paulo. In 2023, he took part in the 35th São Paulo Biennial, for which he developed with artist and professor Ayrson Heráclito a commissioned installation entitled “Floresta de Infinitos“.

He has published several texts and musical albums, nationally and internationally, and has been considered by different academic communities to be one of the main references for African Bantu studies in Brazil. and, by the English magazine Songlines, one of the top 10 Brazilian musicians of our time.