Ian Salamente b. 1998
Salamente draws from memories of migration, violence, and community to construct densely layered compositions where textures, shadows, and debris become narrative tools.
Ian Salamente is a visual artist from Cabo Frio, Rio de Janeiro, in the Região dos Lagos, who began his journey in painting during childhood. His work emerges from observing everyday life and transforms urban elements into symbols of resistance and belonging. In his pieces, the recurring image of the football jersey carries the collective dream and the hope for overcoming marginalization.
Urban poetics shape Ian Salamente’s painting, where everyday elements become signs of public space and reveal tensions between center and periphery, visible and invisible. As curator Rayssa Veríssimo observes, his works trace distances that go beyond the physical—they cut across the affective, the social, and the subjective, mapping inner geographies that escape conventional cartography.
Ian Salamente debuted his first solo exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, “From Salt to the Strait,” at the Centro Cultural Correios. Curated by Rayssa Veríssimo, the show ran from May 15 to June 28, 2025, and invited the public to reflect on the paths of those who live on the margins of hegemonic art centers.
