Ol Ori Buruku
Paulo Nazareth
2015
A Nigerian immigrant stands atop a building in São Paulo, hurling insults in Yoruba over a city that once represented an idealized future, now revealed as a place of inequality, death, and exclusion no different from the homeland he fled. Through Yoruba, the language of the first African slaves brought to Brazil, he channels his frustration over the rupture between himself and his cultural origins, giving voice to the broader diaspora of his people scattered across the world. Ol Ori Buruku, meaning “bad mentality,” with “Ori” signifying the essence of being, frames a central concern: how capitalism’s demands force immigrants to dismantle their cultural traces in order to survive within societies that refuse to allow them to remain whole.
Paulo Nazareth (b. Old man from Nak Borun [Vale do Rio Doce], Brazil / South America) lives and works throughout the world. His multidisciplinary practice—spanning performance, video, and installation—often takes form through encounters on the road. Embodying simple gestures with vast social resonance, his work addresses migration, race, and colonialism, foregrounding those rendered invisible by political and economic systems. Travel functions as both medium and method, a means of confronting inherited narratives of nationhood and belonging. Nazareth’s projects have been exhibited internationally, challenging the boundaries between image, testimony, and action while insisting on art’s potential to reimagine human solidarity in a globalized world.
Nazareth’s recent solo shows include Patuá/Patois (WIELS, Brussels, early 2025), NAZARETHANA (Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo, Sept–Oct 2025) and the long-term Esconjuro (Inhotim, 2024-25).