Samuel de Saboia on art, with allure of the spiritual - Mission

Samuel de Saboia on art, with allure of the spiritual

By Sarah Fones.

Dreamy, thoughtful, and abundantly creative, Samuel de Saboia discusses the importance of place and the healing power of self-reflection.

Midway through my conversation with the Brazilian artist Samuel de Saboia, I have an inkling that he regularly checks his horoscope. “Are you into astrology?” I ask, only semi-sheepishly. A big grin appears on his face. “A hundred percent,” he replies, confirming my hypothesis. De Saboia quickly tells me his favorite astrology app, mentions another popular one he dislikes, and rattles off his sun, rising, and moon signs. (He’s a Libra.)

I then joke that “What’s your sign?” might precede “What’s your name?” among certain cohorts in Los Angeles. Familiar with the type, de Saboia agrees that “it’s a very L.A. thing.” It’s one of a handful of cities the 26-year-old visual and multimedia artist visits often, for two- to four-month stretches of time. Despite this peripatetic existence, de Saboia isn’t a jet setter per se, nor is he a nomad exactly. Instead he might be considered a “seeker.”

“It has been really about the experience that I’m looking for,” he says. “When it gets to comfort, my place is Paris, when it gets to community, London for sure. Then when it gets to both advancements and evolution and changing, I get to be in L.A. When I want to really go into expansion of myself, inside myself and outside, then I come to Bahia.”

De Saboia has been navigating this rarefied route for the past eight years, making and showing art all the while. Doing so allows him to tap into different mindsets and modes of creation, “going to another place that I have inside myself.”

The art in question tends to be large-scale, rendered in acrylics, oil sticks, charcoals, and inks. Heads and sometimes bodies appear inside, or nestled alongside, wildly colorful, indistinct objects or abstractions. Maybe due to the corporeal elements or the vivid hues, the works have an unmistakable vibrancy—an ‘alive’ quality.

Since his inaugural solo 2018 gallery show in New York, de Saboia has exhibited his work in Mexico City, Brussels, Zurich, and Milan. He has shown at Frieze L.A. and Art Basel Miami and completed residencies in Marseille and Florence. His presence at these cultural spectacles draws even more attention due to his fashion sensibility, most evident in his growing list of glossy magazine editorials. In 2022, Comme des Garçons tapped him to direct and star in a campaign for its fragrance Zero, as well as to collaborate on a limited edition set of fragrance miniatures.

Perhaps the foray into fashion was destiny. Having grown up in Recife, a city on Brazil’s northeastern coast, de Saboia remembers wearing his cousin’s hand-me-downs or cheap pieces from fast-fashion chains. But he had an eye for the artistic and avant-garde early on. He recalls being somewhat obsessed with Comme des Garçons. He even had a poster of one of its ads affixed to the wall of his childhood bedroom. The room, he adds, wasn’t even half the size of his studios nowadays. “I remember looking at that thing every single day. I knew I wanted to be part of that. And I had no idea what ‘part of that’ even meant.”

De Saboia is the child of preachers. Within the mixed Black and Indigenous family, Christianity coexists with magic and witchcraft. The spiritual and physical worlds carry equal weight. Death is not to be feared. It’s never destructive, but often regenerative. Underscoring this point, de Saboia mentions the day his grandfather died and how his sister gave birth that same evening. And how when his aunt, also an artist, passed away, her nephew started painting in earnest 24 hours later. De Saboia likens these deaths to gifts of sorts, promises of excellence or achievement bestowed upon the next generation.

“I was just looking around and researching who were the editors from the magazines, who were the people that worked in the galleries and so on. I added everyone on Facebook and I was messaging them, like, ‘Hi, my name’s Samuel de Saboia. I’m 17 years old. I’m figuring out how to leave my city. And I have this series of works that I’m selling right now.”

Despite a spiritually rich family life, de Saboia longed to create and explore beyond close confines. Recognizing the limitations of his surroundings, he knew that if he could only figure a way out, he would eventually make it. Like any savvy Gen Z, he started online, introducing himself while building an informal network of art world acquaintances. “I was just looking around and researching who were the editors from the magazines, who were the people that worked in the galleries and so on. I added everyone on Facebook and I was messaging them, like, ‘Hi, my name’s Samuel de Saboia. I’m 17 years old. I’m figuring out how to leave my city. And I have this series of works that I’m selling right now.’”

He charged about $30 a piece, eventually earning enough money (and confidence) to head to São Paulo. Once there, he hit up “every party possible” and started meeting curators, garnering more invites, and ultimately collaborating with fellow artists he had met online. By 19, de Saboia had landed his first exhibition in Brazil—the youngest person to show at the Cultural Center of São Paulo.

He had also started garnering an Instagram following. De Saboia remembers creating a long-ish post saying he would be selling a series of paintings in the hope of financing a trip to New York for a solo show. Word spread quickly. “It became viral because people started to repost it and put it on their stories and so on. And that led me to sell all the pieces within a month. And within two months I did the passport. Then I set up everything, and then I went to the U.S.”

“I’m a Black guy, quite gay, quite queer, living in a city that was quite violent at the time. So we all just figured out that the best thing would be for me to leave.”

Buoyed by the social media buzz, de Saboia knew that people believed in what he was doing. He headed to New York, where his paintings appeared in a solo show called Beautiful Wounds at Ghost Gallery. Viewers (and the media) homed in on its theme of youth violence and soon the art prodigy was asked to weigh in. He remembers one interview in which he recalled the deaths of friends back home going viral around the time of Brazil’s elections, inadvertently making him a poster boy of sorts for the country’s left. He also caught the attention of the family of the soon-to-be president, Jair Bolsonaro—after one of Bolsonaro’s sons posted about him on Twitter, the threats started coming. Seeing the hate on his feeds day in and day out became debilitating. Then his parents began receiving death threats at their home. Something had to give.

“I’m a Black guy, quite gay, quite queer, living in a city that was quite violent at the time,” de Saboia says. “So we all just figured out that the best thing would be for me to leave.”

He spent the next four years largely away from his family, returning infrequently for just a few days at a time. It wasn’t until fall 2022, after Lula secured a third term as president, that de Saboia finally felt comfortable about going back. In the interim, his father had kept close tabs, amassing an exhaustive collection of his son’s press clippings. Meanwhile, de Saboia traveled, exhibited internationally, and saw his works scooped up by prominent Black collectors in the U.S.

“After some hours, some days, a week, that really tends to germinate new, beautiful, fantastic ways of seeing things.”

Had he grown up elsewhere—say, São Paulo—de Saboia doubts his technique would be as inventive. Learning to do things “properly,” or simply being more comfortable, would have dragged out that progress and inhibited imagination. “I think that the lack of access, in a way, it did push me to become better, quicker, but it didn’t make things easier,” he says. “It just made me more eager to make them happen.”

Prodigious output aside, de Saboia admits his process inevitably gets stymied. Sometimes it comes ahead of a solo show when he looks at his paintings and finds himself feeling completely lost. Then comes the outburst, followed by tears, and finally a nap in his studio. Ultimately it’s a form of catharsis. “After some hours, some days, a week, that really tends to germinate new, beautiful, fantastic ways of seeing things,” he adds.

De Saboia says that despite his success, his parents still expect him to carry on the family tradition and become a preacher one day. At first the idea seems out of the question. But then de Saboia concedes he already talks like his father, evangelizing among friends while discussing both art and life more generally.

It’s clear his upbringing has ultimately proved an asset, and de Saboia can appreciate this. Truthfully, his parents have helped shape a large part of his identity. Home is everywhere, but theirs is a refuge. “It is kind of fantastic because, in a way, even without realizing, or even without actually wanting to do so, they prepared me perfectly for the arena that I’m part of. I mean, they have a different lifestyle, but the love is in there. So that part for me is quite safe.”

All imagery Samuel De Saboia©. Homepage image ‘The Magician: Spirit Dance(2023)’ , inside top left ‘Oxotocanxoxo(2023)’ and top right ‘Iboga’ 2022). Taken from Mission’s Expression issue, guest edited by Donatella Versace.