The Vassouras Museum opens its programme with Chegança, an exhibition curated by Marcelo Campos that brings together more than 70 artists to celebrate the traditions, histories and identities of the Vale do Café, in the countryside of the state of Rio de Janeiro. Among the highlights of the show, on view from 6 December 2025 to 31 May 2026, is the Brazilian artist and Bahia-born Nádia Taquary, who presents her monumental work Puxada de Rede [Dragging a net].

Recognised for her research into Afro-Brazilian jewellery, Taquary transforms ancestral materials and symbols into visual narratives of striking expressive force. In Puxada de Rede (2013), the artist foregrounds Black female protagonism, evoking the women who uphold and transmit traditions, knowledge and forms of resistance. Emblematic elements of her practice — such as the articulated fish, a recurring symbol in Afro-Brazilian jewellery — appear here on an expanded, intricate and exuberant scale, bringing to light stories of struggle, resilience and freedom.

Beyond its monumental character, the work functions as a call to collective memory. By bringing ancestry and contemporaneity into close dialogue, Puxada de Rede resonates directly with the spirit of the exhibition, which proposes revisiting rituals, listening to voices and strengthening alliances between territory, tradition and the future. Featuring artists such as Rosana Paulino, Denilson Baniwa, Sonia Gomes, Beatriz Milhazes, Walter Firmo, Eustáquio Neves and Tarsila do Amaral, among many other essential figures in Brazilian art, Chegança invites the public to sing, dance, wander and reflect — just like the processions evoked in the curatorial text — on the many possible ways of creating new encounters.

The exhibition inaugurates the Vassouras Museum with a gesture of celebration and welcome, bringing together works that cross past and present to project what is yet to come.

More information: museuvassouras.org.br/