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  • Constelar Cultural is a non-profit arts project, founded in 2026 by Florence Woodfield Morais and Claudio Ribeiro Krause to create...

    Constelar Cultural is a non-profit arts project,  founded in 2026 by Florence Woodfield Morais and Claudio Ribeiro Krause to create new 'constellations' of connections, contacts and shared ideas between artists, cultural practitioners and arts professionals in Brazil and the UK.

     

    Constelar Cultural runs 'research capsules' that seek to research and illuminate work by exceptional artists and cultural practitioners that work outside of the major axis of the Brazilian art market. Our first research capsule is focussed on the North-eastern state of Ceará. Historically underestimated within Brazil itself, this region holds a unique importance for global biodiversity and huge potential for the agricultural, economic and cultural development within Brazil, and internationally. Ceará also is home to a rare biome, Caatinga, which is currently the subject of major research into its unique flora, fauna and resilience to drought. Initially, Constelar Cultural aims to offer two annual residencies to Brazilian artists based in Ceará to London, whereby the chosen artist receives mentorship by Florence Woodfield Morais and other experienced industry mentors. Opportunities to exhibit work at the end of the residency may also arise, although not guaranteed. Constelar Cultural will deliver our programme in partnership with Porto Iracema Escola das Artes, a highly competitive professional art school in Fortaleza. Porto Iracema das Artes is administrated by the Instituto Dragão do Mar, which operates 17 museums and cultural centres in the Ceará region. 

     

    Constelar Cultural will also hold symposia, exhibitions, lectures and events that also share the objective of creating new 'constellations' of connections, shared ideas and opportunities between artists and art industry figures in Brazil and the UK.  We wish to serve a new and positive consciousness that explores human capacity and human flourishing within a sustainable and equal world. Through art, we seek to serve the necessary breaking down of old construsts that seek to maintain divisions between the so-called 'new world' and 'old world'; instead, championing work that exalts the potential of art as fundamentally beyond all boundaries of country or creed. 

     

    For more information, please sign up to our newsletter. 

  • Participating Artists

    Announcing our Inaugural Artist, Alice Dote

    Alice Dote in her studio, 2025. Photograph by Igor de Melo.

    Announcing our Inaugural Artist

    Alice Dote

    We are delighted to confirm Alice Dote as the inaugural artist to visit London as part of the Constelar residency programme. Alice consistently stood out as an artist who is pushing the boundaries of what the art market currently has to offer for emerging artists in the region. With energy, dedication and determination, paired with an original and promising body of work, she has demostrated herself to be an artist who is ready for expansion. 

     

    Alice will undertake her Constelar residency under the mentorship of Florence Woodfield Morais, in September - October 2026. While in London, she will receive an intense period of mentorship alongside her studio practise. Her work will gain its UK debut at Paraíso, a newly-established art fair dedicated to Latin-American art, which will coincide with Frieze art fair, London, in October 2026. 

     

    Ahead of her arrival in London, Alice Dote has been offered gallery representation by Astéri Contemporary. To see images of her work and to read about her practise, please visit the Artists page and view her online Viewing Room using the tabs above. 

  • Inaugural artist chosen for Fortaleza residency

    Olavo Ferrari
    Inaugural artist chosen for Fortaleza residency , Olavo Ferrari

    Inaugural artist chosen for Fortaleza residency

    Olavo Ferrari

    Constelar is pleased to present Olavo Ferrari as the inaugural artist to be invited to Fortaleza to participate in our newly-founded residency programme that functions between London and Fortaleza, Brazil. Olavo will take part in a residency under the mentorship of sculptor Narcélio Grud that will conclude with a solo exhibition at Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar in January 2026.

     

    Olavo Ferrari is an emerging painter whose practice sits in the tension between traditional portraiture and contemporary anxieties around neurodivergence, dopamine disregulation, the fragmenting effects of social media, and climate anxiety. Ferrari’s work engages with his experience and trajectory as an individual with ADHD, and the effects of the drug Ritalin on his attention span and dopamine regulation.  He juxtaposes this intensely personal subject matter with an assured engagement with the legacy of early twentieth-century European modernism, as well as with post-war British figurative painting, particularly Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. He draws on these pivotal moments in the development of abstraction and portraiture not as historical quotation but as living languages, capable of carrying real psychological weight. For Ferrari, abstraction is not a formal escape but a vehicle for psychic intensity: a means of giving form to inner complexity, vulnerability, and unresolved trauma.

    Amid the emotional and neurological disregulation caused by Big Tech and the fear and confusion of climate breakdown, and a broader cynicism toward the intentions and effectiveness of established institutions, Ferrari's research into youth culture, through a lens of his own experience of neurodivegance, seeks to understand selfhood in a more integrated way — one that moves beyond simply embodying counter-culture or staging dystopian critique. Ferrari holds a BA in Liberal Arts from Kings College, London. After holding the position of Studio Manager at Kupfer Gallery (London) during 2025, he now manages The Forge Studios, a studio complex and artist community space in Hackney Wick, London. 

  • PARTNERSHIPS

    New Institutional Partnership Confirmed

    New Institutional Partnership Confirmed

     We're happy to announce the first official institutional partner for the Constelar programme - Porto Iracema Das Artes, a fantastic art school in Fortaleza, Brazil which runs highly competitive and sought-after professional art courses for artists from the Ceará region. Porto Iracema das Artes is administrated by the Instituto Dragão do Mar, which operates 17 museums and cultural centres in the Ceará region. It’s an honour to work with Porto Iracema das Artes, who will not only integrate Constelar’s artist development and mentorship activities into their programme, but will also provide logistical support and facilities for international artists visiting Ceará as part of the Constelar residency programmes.