Dalton Paula

Lisson Gallery is pleased to present its inaugural exhibition with Brazilian artist Dalton Paula (b. 1982), featuring eight new paintings that center Black childhoods as spaces of memory, presence, and cultural continuity. Expanding beyond his signature portraiture, Paula’s vivid, scene-like compositions capture birthdays, rituals, and play, set against his hallmark blue-green backgrounds—a nod to Brazil’s photo-painting tradition. At the exhibition’s heart is a monumental four-meter-wide canvas depicting 17 children in a traditional choir, evoking ancestral knowledge and collective joy. Paula’s work reclaims erased histories, offering childhood as a powerful site of resistance, inheritance, and imagination.