Rosana Paulino awarded the 2025 Black Mountain College International Artist Prize
Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino has been awarded the 2025 Black Mountain College International Artist Prize, a $20,000 annual grant honoring artists whose work reflects the experimental, socially engaged ethos of Black Mountain College (1933-1957). The prize recognizes national or international artists whose practices cross disciplines and engage critically with culture, history, and community.
Based in São Paulo, Paulino is an artist, educator, and researcher whose work confronts social, racial, and gendered histories, with a particular focus on the lived experiences and representations of Black women in Brazilian society. Her multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, embroidery, printmaking, collage, sculpture, and installation, often blending personal memory with archival material to examine the enduring legacies of slavery and European colonialism.
According to advance press materials, Paulino describes her practice as driven by “the desire to question how images, archives, and scientific devices have constructed and naturalized narratives about Black bodies, especially those of Black women.” By reworking historical photographs, colonial documents, and scientific imagery through stitching, layering, and material transformation, she performs what she calls “a symbolic gesture of repair,” restoring voice and corporeality to figures historically reduced to data or stereotype.
As part of the award, Paulino will participate in a guided site visit and archival research experience with the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center.
Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (120 College St., Asheville). For more information, visit blackmountaincollege.org.