Image: Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Sorocaba
The Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Sorocaba (MACS) will open Marcelino Melo’s solo exhibition 'Etnogênese – O que é, e o que pode ser' on 15 August 2026, with visitation running through 15 November 2026. The museum is presenting the show as part of its current programming in Sorocaba, Brazil, and the opening coincides with the city’s anniversary date, a point the institution highlights in its announcement.
According to MACS, the exhibition is curated by Emicida, Luiza Testa and Patrícia Borges. It brings together Melo’s newest series and continues the artist’s earlier 'Quebradinha' body of work, which made his name through miniature sculptures reproducing Brazilian peripheral architecture. In this new project, the focus shifts from buildings and urban structures to the people who build and inhabit those spaces.
The exhibition takes the anthropological term etnogênese as its point of departure. In the museum text, the concept is used to describe the emergence of an ethnic identity or the process through which a group comes to recognise and be recognised as distinct. Melo links that idea to peripheral experience and to the social identity of the favelado, using it to extend his research beyond architecture toward questions of recognition and political visibility.
Two works singled out in the MACS materials help define the exhibition’s scope. One is 'Èmí, o sopro da vida', based on a Yoruba myth of human creation. The other is the installation 'O que é, e o que pode ser', made up of 64 pieces. The museum says that brick and clay remain central to Melo’s practice, with the brick functioning as both a visual and conceptual element derived from clay and connected to narratives that move between creation myths and the everyday life of the quebradas.
The curatorial framing in the announcement places particular emphasis on recognition rather than origin. Luiza Testa is quoted saying that the series is less about the birth of a population than about the political recognition of people who were already there. MACS also cites Emicida, who writes that it is impossible to be modern without transforming reality, and relates Melo’s use of scale to making visible what the city often ignores.
Melo, also known as Nenê or Quebradinha, was born in 1994 in Carneiros, in Brazil’s Alagoas state, and lives in São Paulo’s south zone. The museum identifies him as a visual artist, aerial photographer and art educator. It notes that he became known for 'Quebradinha' in 2019 and that the series is now held in collections including Instituto Moreira Salles, Museu das Favelas and Fazenda Vista Verde. MACS also says he presented 'Etnogênese – O que é, e o que pode ser' as his first solo exhibition at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói in 2024 and that he was nominated for the Prêmio PIPA in 2025.
For the Sorocaba presentation, MACS lists a pre-opening for invited guests on 14 August 2026, from 6 pm to 10 pm, followed by the public opening on 15 August at 10 am. The museum is located at Av. Dr. Afonso Vergueiro, 280, Centro, and the exhibition is scheduled to remain on view until 15 November 2026.
