Category: Exhibitions

In 2026, Rod RAS took part in the 4th edition of MUVUCATO Vem de Dentro, a group exhibition held at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro. The participation comes at a moment of intense production, in a year when the artist was developing new embroidered works for the O Alquimista, As Feras Também Amam and Jardim Elétrico series.

Rod RAS’s practice is rooted in freehand embroidery — metallic, polyester and cotton threads on canvas — and in self-portraiture, addressing identity, desire and belonging through his experience as a gay man. Placed within a group show, this production enters into dialogue with other contemporary poetics and reaffirms thread and body as artistic language. It is a practice built up since 2021, when the self-portraits of the Shibari & Flowers series began.

Group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2026.

In 2026, Rod RAS joined the group exhibition Nossos Segredos at Casulo Arte & Cultura + Ateliê Bikost, São Paulo — a year that extends a production in expansion, with new embroidered works from the O Alquimista, As Feras Também Amam and Jardim Elétrico series.

The show’s title resonates with central axes of the artist’s work: intimacy, desire and what remains hidden. In Rod RAS’s embroidery, self-portraiture exposes precisely what the norm tries to conceal — the secret turned into image, stitch by stitch, in threads that accumulate time and memory on the canvas. Born in 1990 in Minas Gerais, the artist now has works in private collections across 20 countries around the world.

Group exhibition at Casulo Arte & Cultura + Ateliê Bikost, São Paulo/SP, 2026.

In 2026, Rod RAS took part in Utopia Cuir – Derivas Depois do Agora, a group exhibition at Espaço UM55, São Paulo. The show places the artist’s work within a context dedicated to queer and cuir perspectives in contemporary art — a context closely aligned with his own trajectory.

Rod RAS’s embroidered production, anchored in self-portraiture, shares with that horizon the idea of imagining other futures for the body and for desire. Between mythology, Brazilian nature and personal memory, his compositions propose narratives of transformation and acceptance — drifts, too, after the now. The year 2026 added up to four participations in group exhibitions, between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, consolidating a circuit that has been taking shape since 2023.

Group exhibition at Espaço UM55, São Paulo/SP, 2026.

In 2026, Rod RAS took part in the group exhibition Sauna Gay Satanista at Paradoxo Casa Atelier, Rio de Janeiro — his second show at the venue, following Queereres in 2023. The return consolidates an ongoing relationship with Rio’s independent art circuit.

The universe evoked by the title — desire between men, the night, the imagery of the forbidden — finds direct correspondence in the artist’s research, which addresses sexual repression, guilt and internalized stigma through embroidery and self-portraiture, turning what was once a cause for shame into the very material of the work. In that sense, the show gives body to themes that have run through his production since the earliest embroideries.

Group exhibition at Paradoxo Casa Atelier, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2026.

In 2025, Rod RAS joined the group exhibition A Gente Quer +, held at Vórtice Cultural within Mix Brasil – Museu da Diversidade, São Paulo. The show adds to a sequence of participations in projects linked to Vórtice Cultural that had begun the year before, when the venue hosted three of his exhibitions.

That year, the artist was producing works for the A Caçada, Jardim Elétrico and As Feras Também Amam series, alongside self-portraits from Shibari & Flowers. The recurrence of the unclothed male body and of desire as narrative construction brings his work close to exhibitions dedicated to diversity — a field in which Rod RAS’s embroidery asserts, stitch by stitch, a presence. His works already figure in private collections across 20 countries.

Group exhibition at Vórtice Cultural, Mix Brasil – Museu da Diversidade, São Paulo/SP, 2025.

In 2025, Rod RAS was part of Pau Brasil – 100 Anos, a group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro. The show marks a centenary and gathers artists around a reflection on Brazilian art and its continuities. The venue has been, since 2023, one of the most recurring spaces in the artist’s CV.

For an artist who embroiders the body and the landscape with references to Brazilian nature and imagery, taking part inscribes his research in a tradition of debate on national identity. In Rod RAS’s case, that revisiting happens from a queer and autobiographical position, in which handcrafted embroidery becomes at once technique and discourse. Among his works are embroideries that invoke the fauna, flora and myths of the country.

Group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2025.

In 2025, Rod RAS took part in the 3rd edition of MUVUCATO Vem de Dentro at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro — a project to which he would return the following year, in its 4th edition, deepening an ongoing relationship with a venue that was already one of the most frequent in his CV.

Built stitch by stitch in freehand embroidery, the artist’s work dialogues with exhibitions that value manual processes and poetics of making. That year, his production included works from the A Caçada and Jardim Elétrico series, alongside the continuing self-portraits of Shibari & Flowers — a series that has accompanied his research since 2021, always in compositions that join the domesticity of thread to the unexpectedness of the subject.

Group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2025.

Also in 2025, Rod RAS took part in Transbordar, a group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro — his third show at the venue that year, closing a season of intense presence in Rio’s circuit, which added up to five participations in group exhibitions, all of them between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The title — overflowing — is a fitting key to read the artist’s production in that period: embroideries produced in metallic and cotton threads on canvas, spilling beyond the traditional hoop, and a practice that crosses series, from the bound self-portraits of Shibari & Flowers to the mythical figures of Minotauro de Pirenópolis, always with the body as the first territory.

Group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2025.

In 2025, the Falo de Erotismo project reached its 4th edition, held by deCurators in Brasília, with the participation of Rod RAS — present in the show since its first edition in 2024. It was also the first time the artist exhibited outside the Rio–São Paulo axis.

Eroticism is one of the founding axes of Rod RAS’s research: the unclothed body, rendered in embroidery, becomes a territory of vulnerability and affirmation. His continuous presence in the project accompanies the maturing of that line of work and consolidates it as one of the most recognizable strands of his production — slow compositions, made stitch by stitch, in which the patience of embroidery meets the frankness of the subject.

Group exhibition at deCurators, Brasília/DF, 2025.

In 2024, Rod RAS took part in the 3rd edition of Falo de Erotismo, held at NaUapi on the occasion of EventoObra 100, São Paulo. The year was the busiest of his CV so far, with six group exhibitions between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

The edition reinforced the artist’s presence in a circuit of exhibitions dedicated to eroticism in Brazilian art. In Rod RAS’s embroidery, the delicacy of technique contrasts with the frankness of the subjects — desire, male nudity, repression — lending the thread a political density that goes beyond ornament. Produced in metallic and cotton threads on canvas, his embroideries join the meticulous to the direct.

Group exhibition at NaUapi, por ocasião do EventoObra 100, São Paulo/SP, 2024.

The 2nd edition of Falo de Erotismo, in 2024, took place at Mix Brasil’s Ocupação Artemísia, São Paulo, again with the participation of Rod RAS — the second of the project’s four editions that feature in his CV, in a year that would total six group shows.

The context of Mix Brasil, dedicated to sexual and gender diversity, amplifies the meaning of the artist’s work: to embroider oneself is, for Rod RAS, a gesture of queer self-representation — turning into image what culture teaches to hide, giving visibility to the body and to desire between men. It is also a gesture of patience: each image is built stitch by stitch on the canvas.

Group exhibition at Mix Brasil – Ocupação Artemísia, São Paulo/SP, 2024.

In 2024, Rod RAS took part in Nenhuma Nudez Será Castigada, a group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro — a venue where he had already exhibited the previous year, in the group show Erotic, and which would become one of the most recurring spaces in his CV.

Few titles converse so directly with the artist’s work: the name is itself a defense of nudity. That year, Rod RAS was producing the Santos series — one of his most direct bodies of work on faith, body and stigma — and the Shibari & Flowers self-portraits: embroideries in which nudity is at once vulnerability and affirmation, exactly what the exhibition’s name sets out to defend.

Group exhibition at OLugar Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro/RJ, 2024.