Born and raised in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro, Panmela Castro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1981) began her career as a graffiti artist and soon started exploring the marginalized female body as a critical language in relation to urban space, developing performances and artworks based on personal experiences and emotional exchanges with other women. Her work spans various media such as video, photography, painting, and objects, with a strong political and social emphasis, aimed at denouncing machismo, gender-based violence, and structural inequalities.
Her practice is deeply rooted in Brazilian reality, in the life stories of ordinary women, and in the fight for social justice. One example is the project Retratos Relatos (Portraits Reports), started in 2019 from accounts of violence and resilience sent to her by women from across the country. These testimonies were transformed into visual works that create spaces for listening, care, and healing. Working with the concept of emotional drifting (deriva afetiva), she allows chance, encounter, and listening to guide the direction of her practice, rejecting the rigidity of thematic art and proposing a production open to life. For her, art has the power to transform culture, promote rights, and imagine fairer futures. As a Black, peripheral, and feminist woman, she demands spaces of representation in major collections and institutions as a fundamental part of the decolonization of art history. Her practice combines aesthetic awareness, political action, and social transformation.
In 2010, she founded Rede NAMI, an NGO that uses urban art and education to promote women’s rights and combat gender-based violence. Through workshops, exhibitions, publications, and social actions, NAMI has impacted thousands of people, especially young Black women from urban peripheries. Castro is also one of the leading voices in preserving the memory of Marielle Franco, a Black activist and councilwoman assassinated in Rio de Janeiro in 2018.
Solo exhibitions include: Direito ao Afeto, Pavilhão Victor Brecheret, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2025); Retratos Relatos, Sesc Centro, Curitiba, Brazil (2025); Ideias Radicais Sobre o Amor, Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2024); Do Jardim, Um Oceano, Galeria Francisco Fino, Lisbon, Portugal (2024); Retratos Relatos: Subvertendo a Dor, Sesc Santa Rita, Paraty, Brazil (2023); Deriva Afetiva: Dakar, Inclusartiz Institute, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2023); Retratos Relatos, Vila Cultural Cora Coralina (VCCC), Goiânia, Brazil (2022); Retratos Relatos, Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021).
Group exhibitions include: Crivo, Casa Bradesco, São Paulo, Brazil (2025); Rua, Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Rio de Janeiro (2020); Ocupação Lavra, Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro (2020); Aparelho, Maus Hábitos, Porto (2019); Grau 360, Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro (2019); Palavras Somam, Museu de Arte Brasileira da FAAP, São Paulo (2019); Street Type, Caixa Cultural DF, Brasília (2018); Frestas Trienal de Artes, Sesc Sorocaba, Sorocaba (2017); Urban Nation Museum Permanent Collection, Urban Nation Museum, Berlin (2017); Synopsis of an Urban Menoir, Andrew Freedman Complex, New York, USA (2016); Vinil Vandals, C’mon Everybody, New York, USA (2016).
Her works are part of several public and private collections, including: Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR), Museu da República, Fundação Anita Mantuano de Artes do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (FUNARJ), Espaço Furnas Cultural, and Furnas Centrais Elétricas in Rio de Janeiro; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, MAB FAAP, Museu de Arte Brasileira Armando Álvares Penteado in São Paulo; The United Nations Art Collection, UN Women, Museu da Câmara dos Deputados in Brasília; Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA), USA; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; IDB Art Collection – Inter-American Development Bank (IDB); Urban Nation Museum, Berlin, Germany.
The artist was nominated for the Select Arte Educação Prize and the PIPA Prize in 2020. She was featured on the list “The Next Generation of Activists Making a Difference” by W Magazine in 2016; named a “Young Global Leader” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in 2013; received the DVF Award from the Diller–von Furstenberg Family Foundation, New York, USA; and was included in Newsweek magazine’s list of “150 Women That Are Shaking the World” in 2012.