In the 1980s, when the world reverberated with the shockwaves caused by AIDS, Brazilian artist José Leonilson (1957–1993) adapted the political discourse of the epidemic into a metaphysical rumination. His work offers a pantheon of symbols, poetics, and patterns, tracing in personal terms the 
odyssey of a disease that provoked fear, confusion, and panic.
Americas Society (AS) presents José Leonilson: Empty Man, the first solo exhibition in the United States of one of the leading figures of contemporary Brazilian art. The show is organized by independent curator Cecilia Brunson, AS’s Director of Visual Arts and Chief Curator Gabriela Rangel, and AS Assistant Curator Susanna V. Temkin, with the cooperation of the Leonilson Project, based in São Paulo.
The mythical universe of José Leonilson constructs an existential narrative around his own condition, and this timeless intimacy resonates in the context of a disease marked so often by loss. “José Leonilson’s practice addressed the question of art as an exercise in introspection. It is mesmerizing,” describes Cecilia Brunson. “Whether sketched, painted, illustrated, or embroidered, his symbols evolve into a vocabulary that can articulate his love, isolation, gender, sexuality — ultimately, a reconciliation with the idea of his death.”
The exhibition features around 50 works, including drawings, paintings, and embroideries, as well as documents loaned from 
public institutions and private collections in Brazil and the U.S. Focusing on the artist’s production from the mid-1980s until his death in 1993, the exhibition will highlight his idiosyncratic language, in which he combined a distinct iconographic lexicon with intimate text. The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated publication.
Born in Fortaleza in 1957, José Leonilson Bezerra Dias emerged as a seminal figure in the world of contemporary Brazilian art during the 1980s. Throughout his career, he traveled extensively across Europe, and his paintings, drawings, and installations were presented in solo and group exhibitions in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, in addition to many exhibitions held in Brazil. In 1991, the artist tested positive for HIV. This diagnosis triggered a decisive shift in his career, as Leonilson began to develop his intimate embroideries, a practice he continued until his death in 1993 at the age of 36.
The exhibition will be on display until February 3, 2018.
For more information: www.as-coa.org/josé-leonilson-emptyman#overview