René Tavares São Tomé and Principe, b. 1983

Overview

René Tavares’ work is based on a process of research spanning through archives, photographs, and literature while bringing to the front stage themes related to historical and socio-political issues that affected different African countries. With a preference for painting and drawing, Tavares’ artistic practice also includes photography, video, and installation. The artist’s work evolves and expands in the form of projects and series that develop over time according to his own experiences of transition between different artistic languages, between the African and European continents, between insular and continental Africa, also between the local and the global, the individual and the collective. By questioning assimilated, neglected, and forgotten heritages and challenging the rigidity of categories and prejudices, the artist’s works are produced in an impulsive and engaged mode to raise awareness and trigger processes of resilience and social empowerment.

Using a palette of rich, deep, and earthy colors and working the canvas in layers and all over, Tavares' figurative universe, with its dreamlike atmosphere, is filled with memories and human presence, faces and gazes that look at us throughout space and time. The works also emphasize iconographic and symbolic elements such as cotton flower fields and plantations, specific animals, objects and housings, and the depiction of group portraits. These collective pictures of men and women, either standing peacefully or shown in their interactions and daily activities, aim to reflect on the historical processes of hybridization and miscegenation happening between several ethnic groups, communities, and cultures including components assimilated during the colonial and post-colonial eras. Either through his paintings or multi-medium installations which often included striking words referring to racism and discrimination, Tavares fuses references taken from ancestral practices and belief systems, collective memories, and heritage with contemporaneity and globalization. Thus, the whole work highlights the processes of appropriation, integration, and merging of heterogeneous religious, social, and cultural components that compose many African cultures.

Tavares holds a Bachelor's in Fine Arts and Visual Arts from the Dakar School of Fine Arts (Senegal), a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts, Painting and Photography from the Rennes School of Fine Arts (France), and a Master's in Art and Heritage Sciences from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (Portugal). Highlights of his career include the selection as a finalist for the EDP Foundation New Artists Award (2022), the Public Vote Prize for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2022), the nomination for Africa’s most influential new artistic talent (FNB Joburg Art Fair, 2018), and the Artist Revelation Prize at São Tomé and Príncipe’s biennale of Art and Culture (2002). René Tavares' work is included in several relevant collections, such as the Collection of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI of Marocco, the PLMJ Foundation (Portugal), Kloser Contemporary Art, AAD - African Artist for Development, Omali Lodge - HBD Group, Sindika Dakolo Collection, World Bank Collection of the Government of São Tomé and Principe, EDP Foundation Collection, Lisbon City Council Collection, Norval Foundation Collection and Schulting Art Collection.

Works

René Tavares
'Minae' VIP Fashion, 2023
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 200 cm
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René Tavares
'Mionga' Life, 2023
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 158 cm
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René Tavares
Bailarinas de Algodão, 2023
Mixed media on canvas
210 x 210 cm
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René Tavares
Cotton people reloaded series. Greetings across the Atlantic. , 2021
Mixed media on paper
165x200cm
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René Tavares
Leve Leve, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 200 cm
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René Tavares
Local Fashion Studio, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
120 x 100 cm

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René Tavares
Local Fashion Studio I, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
170 x 150 cm

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René Tavares
Lovers in the Plantation II, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
100 x 75 cm

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René Tavares
No boundaries to love. Cotton people reloaded, 2021
Mixed media on canvas
152 x 160 cm
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René Tavares
Nova Entidade Lusa, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
122 x 86 cm

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René Tavares
Novas Donas de Plantação, 2022
Mixed media on canvas
163 x 210 cm

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René Tavares
Novo estilo de vida no quintal da antiga roça, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 160 cm
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René Tavares
Paint me a picture I, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on raw canvas
102 x 88 cm

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René Tavares
Paint me a picture II, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on raw canvas
88 x 94 cm

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René Tavares
Paint me a picture III, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on raw canvas
96 x 84 cm

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René Tavares
Paint me a picture IV, 2025
Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on raw canvas
97 x 87 cm

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René Tavares
Past and the future together, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
140 x 110 cm
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René Tavares
Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
Pigment, charcoal, acrylic on wood glued to plywood
66 x 56 x 3 cm (each)

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René Tavares
Retrato de família no quintal da antiga roça, 2024
Mixed media on canvas
160 x 185 cm
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René Tavares
Special Request to the Divine River, 2024
Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
190 x 195 cm

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René Tavares
The mirror of my story I, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
120 x 80 cm

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René Tavares
The mirror of my story II, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
120 x 80 cm
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René Tavares
“Pessoa” behind the veil #1 , 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
68 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
“Pessoa” behind the veil #17, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
68 x 58 cm
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René Tavares
“Pessoa” behind the veil #2, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
68 x 58 cm

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René Tavares
“Pessoa” behind the veil #21, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
68 x 58 cm
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René Tavares
“Pessoa” behind the veil #6, 2025
Natural pigment, acrylic, oil, stencil, charcoal on canvas
68 x 58 cm

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