There is no dark or edgy art on show at São Paulo’s Galatea new branch in Salvador. In the capital of Bahia, the new space masterminded by young trio Tomás Toledo, Antonia Bergamin and Conrado Mesquita exhibits “Janelas Imaginárias” (Imaginary Windows), by Rio’s Mucki Botkay (b. 1958). Her beautiful work honors the art of glass-bead embroidery by blending the ancient beadwork tradition from three fronts: the arts and rituals from Afro-Brazilian descendants and our Indigenous peoples, with French Aubusson tapestry knowhow, originally inspired by Europe’s millefleur (or thousand flowers) fifteenth-century tapestry design. The artist celebrates the lush fabulousness of Brazil’s tropical flora of the vast Mata Atlantica Forest in canvases covered inch by inch with hand-embroidered miçangas (beads), rooted in the African masanga, small glass beads, or in the Brazilian Indigenous Tupi nation language posanga, adornment.

They are glass beads dyed in an exuberant palette of the artist’s choice, giving her work a radically different texture and approach from the magnificent modernist art of woolen tapestry that flourished in Brazil in the mid-1950s with masters Genaro and Burle Marx. Mucki’s canvases are entirely bead-embroidered and handcrafted by gifted men and women from two impoverished communities in Rio and Bahia, where for years she has a second home.

Last month, Newcity Brazil published my piece on neo-baroque artist Iuri Sarmento. I felt I had to explain my love for Brazilian baroque. After all, how can a broad-minded, contemporary art critic admire colonized art? First and foremost, I love and respect all forms of art—always have—from cave art to self-taught art to contemporary art to AI art (read the piece on Victor Mattina’s amazing work), and I also love art based on beautifully made handcrafts. I will stop excusing and explaining myself now: Basta!

Once an authentic girl from Ipanema, Mucki, now in her mid-sixties, still cuts a striking figure and is no feeble-minded, well-off woman artist educated in Europe. She has been active in the visual art world all her life and—importantly—always honoring her passion for the Brazilian flora. In her early twenties, she produced hand-painted fabrics for interior design and quickly became a top name in the business, then she jumped on to canvas painting before plunging into her current phase, large, hand-embroidered works (“D’après Rousseau,” a diptych on show, is 56.7-inches-by-61.4-inches each). Curator Leonel Kaz sums up her artwork as pintura com miçangas, painting with beads.

On show, a painting with rich beadwork with the embroidered word Saravá (sah-rah-VAH)—part of our Afro-Brazilian spiritual traditions, our orixas (Umbanda gods) use this word to welcome.

Mucki, what influenced your view of art?

Nothing specific, everything interests me. My work results exclusively from my life experiences. I’m alive in each one of them. Minute by minute something new happens. I want to get in touch, express what I feel amidst all of this and in the process observe nature very, very carefully.

How were your first steps in the visual arts?

I’ve always loved everything related to art. It was by chance during a weekend at Nova Friburgo [interior of Rio de Janeiro state] that I began by painting some bed sheets; from then on, I never stopped. My first works were hand-painted fabrics, then I moved on to painting cushions for decoration and from there to my first embroideries on framed canvas—I felt my embroideries yearned to be hung onto the wall. The first ones were made for Fazenda da Lagoa, a charming inn I had on a farm in the south of Bahia. When I got there over twenty years ago, it was just a simple, native bungalow, no electricity. Maybe because of that, the natural colors exploded in my eyes! So beautiful! The vegetation, the seawater, everything was vibrant. The deserted beach was a piece of paradise with the most stunning light I ever saw. Little by little, my work flourished and integrated into my being as if the work was a testimonial of my life experiences.

Name artists you admire.

Oh, my, so many… Matisse pops in my mind with his bubbling Mediterranean and Moroccan palette. Among living contemporary artists, from German Gerhard Richter to Brazilian Luiz Zerbini. Among the French masters, post-impressionist “Douanier” Rousseau made a big impression on me. At the nuns’ boarding school that I went to in Switzerland in my teens, everything was dull gray: walls, uniform, landscape… Enclosed in the boring gray environment, my chosen class was art history when the teacher projected onto the wall images of colorful paintings, that’s when I got fascinated by Rousseau. My diptych “D’après Rousseau,” on show at Galatea Salvador, is a reminder that when I dove into the universe of art I should never leave it.

Now tell us about your current work, the hand-embroidered canvases.

It was all one step at a time. At first, I used to hand-dye linen fabrics, make cutout patterns of the composition and then have them embroidered. Now I paint and draw the composition directly onto the canvas. After that the entire surface is covered with glass beads sewn in different directions to achieve a three-dimensional effect. Leonel Kaz, the curator of my work, says my canvases are “paintings with beads.” It’s a morose, extremely laborious undertaking that counts on several artisans to complete it to perfection.

Are you a good hand-embroiderer yourself?

The truth is I need help to embroider. My job is to attach minute safety pins with the specific bead color on each color patch and determine the direction the bead should be sewn. I spend countless hours doing this, imagining how the work will turn out. In the process, I confess, I had to learn to be very patient and perseverant.

Finally, I’m curious about two things. How come there is a streamlined 1958 wooden bench, still produced today and very much sought after, originally made in precious coffee-brown jacarandá wood, named after you by no less than the iconic late designer of world-fame, Sergio Rodrigues?

In my early childhood my best friend was Adriana, daughter of querido tio (dear uncle) Sergio. It so happens, Adriana and I were both born in 1958. Tio Sergio was very fond of me and the sound of my name.

Lastly, why the name Mucki?

My father was Hungarian from Budapest, my mother, Austrian. As a baby, in my cot bed I had an Austrian doll I loved called Mucki.

“Mucki Botkay: Janelas Imaginárias” (Imaginary Windows)
Through January 16, 2025
Curated by Leonel Kaz
Galatea Salvador, Bahia