Juliana dos Santos's artistic practice investigates the relationships between color, time, and space. Her artistic practice is defined by immersive installations and the use of natural pigments, watercolor, fabrics, and organic materials - most notably the Clitoria ternatea flower, with which she maintains what she describes as a continuous collaborative process.
The blue extracted from this flower is explored as sensorial, symbolic, and political matter in works whose pictorial construction unfolds into performative actions. Juliana adopts unconventional forms of composition by employing breath, stains, hisses, and bursts generated by the flower itself.
Through this process, the boundaries between abstraction and figuration become porous, dissolving distinctions between painting, printmaking, installation, and performance. Meanwhile, the flower's natural oxidation introduces a temporal dimension to the work, underscoring the impossibility of fixing anything in a permanent state.
Juliana dos Santos holds a PhD in Arts from the Institute of Arts at Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). In 2018, as an artist-in-residence, she taught in the Department of Contextual Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Austria.
Her solo exhibitions include Temporã, Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São Paulo, 2025); Sambiência, Museu das Favelas (São Paulo, 2024); Como terminar uma tese: o tempo da cor, GDA (São Paulo, 2024); Quando a cor chega no azul, CCSP (São Paulo, 2021); and Entre o azul e o que não me deixo/deixam esquecer, Temporada de Projetos Paço das Artes, MIS-SP (São Paulo, 2019). She has also carried out collaborative projects such as What Is Not Inherited, in partnership with Dan Lie, at Kunstverein Braunschweig (Braunschweig, Germany, 2023); and Projeto Vitrine, with Sonia Gomes, at Pivô (São Paulo, 2022).
The artist participated in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo (2025) and was part of the Public Program of Artistic Residency in Sertão Negro, organized by the 35th Bienal de São Paulo (2023), as well as the 3rd Frestas - Trienal de Artes (Sorocaba, 2021) and the 12th Bienal do Mercosul (Porto Alegre, 2020). Selected group exhibitions include Fartura, Luisa Strina (São Paulo, 2025); Dos Brasis: arte e pensamento negro, Sesc Belenzinho (São Paulo, 2023); and Enciclopédia Negra, Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2021). Her works are part of the collections of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and the Centro Cultural São Paulo.