As part of the K21 Global Art Award, the Friends of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen have acquired her site-specific installation “brincando animada: travesti mariposa centopeia / animated play: travesti moth centipede” (2025). The work unfolds across the wall in a freely painted semi-abstract composition, accompanied by newly created sculptures made from taboa. “It is a mysterious gift to see my work – born around my mother Elenice, speaking to the plants and the stars, and my father Aguinaldo, who taught me to work with constancy – reaching places beyond my familiarity. I am deeply grateful and honored to receive the recognition of the 3rd K21 Global Art Award. I am so excited to see my drawings playing and coming to life in this other part of the world,” says Tadáskía.

Drawing lies at the heart of Tadáskía’s practice. Traces of pastel, spray, graphite, and charcoal become vivid and mysterious signs – each mark an intimate gesture, a whisper from a world between worlds. Her sculptures, crafted from taboa, a reed-like plant traditionally used by Afro-Indigenous communities of Latin America, echo ancestral knowledge through their tactile forms. With this straw-like material, Tadáskía shapes small, twisting sculptures that ripple across the space like arrangements or living creatures, expanding the wall drawing into a kaleidoscopic field of motion and presence. The work weaves together self-perception, imagination, and secrecy, inviting us to question fixed roles and inherited norms – particularly those surrounding gender and visibility.

The acquired work has been exhibited in major international institutions, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York (2024) and the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023). Tadáskía’s works are held in prestigious public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, the Pinacoteca São Paulo, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and Kadist in Paris. As of 2025, her work brings a vital contemporary voice from Latin America into the collection of the Kunst-sammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen.

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