Milena Oliveira presents the exhibition The Breadth of Small Gestures at Alban Galeria
The artist opens her first solo exhibition at Alban Galeria on Thursday, May 21, featuring a group of works on textile supports.
In The Breadth of Small Gestures, Milena Oliveira transforms practices associated with the domestic sphere into visual language. Opening on May 21 at Alban Galeria, the exhibition brings together a series of drawings on fabric and an installation that investigate memory, affection, and a coded resistance against the rigidities imposed on female experience in the contemporary world. The exhibition will remain on view until June 27, Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Using the needle as the central element of her research, Milena develops works that articulate embroidered drawings in compositions permeated by memory, intimacy, and narratives that challenge the limits of language within social relations. Her production emerges from the domestic universe to construct a visual language marked by the delicacy of gesture, repetition, and the symbolic construction of affection.
Graduated from the School of Fine Arts at the Federal University of Bahia and holding an MFA in Visual Arts from PPGAV-UFBA, Milena Oliveira was born in Jacobina, at the foothills of the Chapada Diamantina region, and has built her artistic career without losing sight of her place of origin. Her research stems from experiences lived in the interior of Bahia, especially memories connected to family environments and manual practices present in her affective formation. These references intersect with urban experiences and the cultural context of Salvador, the city where she consolidated her artistic education.
Memories of Chapada Diamantina permeate Milena Oliveira’s production through references to embroidery and textile practices from domestic everyday life, although she states that her work “does not employ any rigorous embroidery technique itself.” In fact, the thread that weaves the universe of her work is closer to drawing techniques, using supports such as cotton canvas, felt, and voile. Through a critical and affective perspective, the artist constructs her own visual vocabulary, one that does not oppose aesthetics, but rather subverts its normative character.
“The exhibition The Breadth of Small Gestures stands as a poetic and coded manifesto against the rigidification of female experience in the contemporary world,” defines the exhibition’s curator, Paulo Azeco, who holds a postgraduate degree in Métiers d’Art: Sociologie – Arts Appliqués from École Boulle in Paris, and is the founder and director of Nonada, an art gallery with spaces in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador. He currently serves as the gallery’s general and creative director, while also developing and managing its special projects.
According to Azeco, Milena Oliveira does not seek to make narratives explicit or offer personal testimonies in this new phase of her work, but rather to push the boundaries of language: “How does femininity take shape amid social relations? How is desire communicated in times of image overload? And how can one survive a logic that transforms affections into forms?” he explains.
Before deepening her investigation into textiles, the artist developed research in ceramics, using the needle as a recurring tool for inscription and drawing on matter. During the pandemic, domestic space became central to her production, leading her to incorporate embroidery and sewing as natural unfoldings of her research into gesture, time, and intimacy. From there, she began exploring new and challenging artistic limits, culminating now in The Breadth of Small Gestures.
The Artist
Milena Oliveira, born in Jacobina, Bahia, holds an MFA in Visual Arts from PPGAV-UFBA and a BFA in Fine Arts from UFBA. Her interdisciplinary practice combines drawing, sculpture, installation, photography, and embroidery. Her work is marked by the symbolic use of the needle, an element that connects surfaces, temporalities, and sensibilities, whether in fabric or clay. More than a tool, the needle becomes a poetic vector that articulates encounters between the material and the emotional, the visible and the invisible.
She has participated in exhibitions at institutions and venues such as the Goethe Institut, the Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Casa do Povo, Solar dos Abacaxis, MAMAM (Recife), the Museu Nacional da República, Casa Gabriel (São Paulo), OÁ Galeria (Espírito Santo), the National Art Salon of Jataí (Goiás), and José de Guimarães Gallery in Lisbon. Her works belong to the collections of Galeria ACBEU, Instituto Solar dos Abacaxis, and the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, as well as private collections.
About the Curator
Paulo Azeco, born in Goiânia in 1983, holds a degree in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Goiás and a postgraduate degree in Métiers d’Art: Sociologie – Arts Appliqués from École Boulle in Paris.
He has worked in the management and commercial departments of major Brazilian galleries such as Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, Millan, and Houssein Jarouche. As a curator, he organized Efrain Almeida’s solo exhibition at the Museum of Sacred Art of São Paulo (2022); the exhibition Annas — selected by Select magazine as the best group exhibition in a gallery in 2019 —; and Samara Paiva’s solo exhibition at Casa do Benin in Salvador. He also collaborated on the curatorship of Robert Indiana’s solo exhibition at Galeria Houssein Jarouche; Geníaco, a dialogue between Ariano Suassuna and Gilvan Samico at Galeria Base; and the exhibition bringing together Iberê Camargo and Gerben Mulder at Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel. He was an art columnist for GQ magazine and contributor to the publication Manipresto. He is the founder and director of Nonada, an art gallery with spaces in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Salvador, where he currently serves as general and creative director while overseeing special projects.
Information
Exhibition: The Breadth of Small Gestures – Milena Oliveira
Opening: May 21, 2026, at 7:30 p.m.
Exhibition Period: May 22 – June 27, 2026
Venue: Alban Galeria
Visiting Hours: Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. – 7 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Press Contact: Companhia de Comunicação – +55 71 98892-1119 (Antonio Moreno)