Tatyani Quintanilha

​Drawings on Paper

Born in Brasília (Brazil) and based in Montreal (Canada), Tatyani Quintanilha is known for her dark soft pastel drawings which depict her inner view of social human relations, especially regarding human bodies and values. Since childhood she is interested in the figurative, especially the human figure and its fantastic or symbolic representations. Her adolescence was marked by chronic kidney disease and several periods of social withdrawal for health care, which remain to this day, and where drawing plays an essential role. She graduated in Fine Arts and has a postgraduate in Analytical Psychology.

Her work is disturbing, causes fear in some people and reflection in others. Dry pastel, charcoal and pencils on large-
format crumpled paper refer to raw and primitive, where we can find expressionism and existentialism. The work themes habitually refer to ways of social power, diseases and human existence. As a Latin American woman, she draws political events, portraits and self-portraits, and personal narratives dealing with health problems and question medical
and political power. She participated in exhibitions in Brazil, and her main influences are Francisco Goya, Leonora Carrington, Francis Bacon, Edvard Munch, Antoni Tàpies and René Magritte.

She just started a new life after receiving a kidney transplant in 2019 and recently moved to Montreal where she constantly
works on new dark drawings.

L’architecture du Chaos is a series of drawings created during the pandemic. All drawings were made of soft/dry pastels on paper board, crumpled or not. These drawings are my personal response to the circumstances presented by the COVID-19, where the historic social injustice showed its cruel face. 
My work has always been connected to issues involving health and power. We are all susceptible to the virus, but the socio-political and cultural system chooses who to care for and who to protect. 
Unfortunately, the real right to health care and chances of survival is directly proportional to pre-existing conditions such as origins, skin color, social class and integration. Most of those who actually died and will die because of the pandemic are the same oppressed people as ever, the poor, the BIPOC, the segregated, the "useless", the elderly and the sick. 
The architecture on which human relations are based is archaic and racist. The pandemic is evidencing our structural flaws, and the need to rethink and change.