About Carmo Johnson Projects

Carmo Johnson Projects is a gallery that promotes Contemporary Brazilian Art.  Founded in 2021, the gallery supports the production of emerging artists from all over the country.  Aiming at an institutional and strategic projection of the careers of the artists represented, the gallery reinforces its fundamental role as a generator of reflections on Brazil's cultural heritage and its magical, symbolic, poetic and political power in contemporary art. Believing in art as a tool of resistance and socio-political transformation, the gallery's mission is aligned with the ancestors wisdom, exalting the diversity of cosmogonies, technologies and sciences, and connecting with nature and the environment to promote sustainable practices and ecological connections.

With solid institutional relationships, the artists represented by the gallery participated in prestigious exhibitions, such as the 60th Venice Biennale "Stranieri Ovunque" (Foreigners Everywhere), 2024, at the Fondation Cartier, with the exhibitions "Les Vivant", 2022, and "Siamo Foresta", 2023. At the invitation of the United Nations, the gallery also collaborated on Future Ours, a public art project inviting artists from around the world to respond to the Summit of the Future and reimagine how we can safeguard our planet. On a national level, we highlight the participation at the 35th São Paulo Biennial, 'Choreographies of the Impossible', 2023, and MAHKU's solo exhibition and retrospective 'Mirações' at MASP, 2023. Always maintaining strong links with other institutions in the country, works by artists represented by Carmo Johnson Projects are included in collections such as Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, MASP - Museu de Arte de São Paulo and Fundação Bienal São Paulo, and private collections such as the one of Andréa and José Olympio Pereira. 

Carmo Johnson

Founder

I studied Art History at the University of Rome - La Sapienza. Later I deepened my interests in art and the art market in London, at the ICA - Institute of Contemporary Art, and after at Sotheby’s, where I internshiped in the Contemporary Art Department.

I’ve lived in Los Angeles where I had professional experiences inside and outside the Contemporary Art world. I am currently living in Brazil and themother of a 14 year old girl. In São Paulo, my projects have always sprung from the open gaps within diversity as was the case with Galeria Logo, which was opened in partnership with Marcelo Secaff and Lucas Ribeiro (Pexão) in 2012.

Between worlds I realize that the itinerant characteristic of my current project has a lot to do with the itinerary of life that I embrace to lead. Back in Brazil, in the pandemic, a relevant factor, to realize that technology would offer us much more flexibility, as long as human relationships and connections are cultivated, so I felt the urge to start over, as I continue to believe in Art as an object of transformation, at all levels and human scales.