This tote bag, which repeats the exhibition title in bold red letters, is more than a simple object — it is a statement piece that carries the symbolic and visual strength of the exhibition into everyday life.

Produced in Portugal from organic cotton, with the exhibition title printed on the front and the artist’s name on the back, the tote bag combines functionality with striking visual design.

Cinthia Marcelle’s project draws on the thought of Antônio Bispo dos Santos (known as Nêgo Bispo) — a quilombola poet, philosopher, teacher, and activist from Piauí — whose reflection on non-linear time, shaped by cycles of return and continuity, inspires the title começo, meio, começo (beginning, middle, beginning) and runs throughout the entire exhibition.

Developed in close collaboration with the artist, this tote bag reflects the poetic and conceptual universe of Cinthia Marcelle, whose artistic practice explores the relationships between past and present — from social justice to environmental and labor struggles, from economic instability to the persistence of colonial structures.

beginning, middle, beginning, is the Cinthia Marcelle's first solo exhibition in Portugal, an exclusive commission for the Central Gallery of Serralves Museum.

Considered to be one of the most compelling voices in contemporary Braziian art, Marcelle has over the last two decades created a body of work that challenges systems of power, social norms and our processes of collective organising.

In what is an award-winning career, she notably received an Honorable Mention from the Jury of the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), for the project Chão de caça (Hunting Ground) and the video Nau/Now, co-created with Tiago Mata Machado, alongside whom she represented the Brazilian National Pavilion.

Inspired by the thinking of Nêgo Bispo — the philosopher, poet and Quilombola leader recognised for his activism and counter-colonial critique — Cinthia Marcelle questions the linear nature of time and its relation to the colonial and social structures that still weigh upon our day-to-day lives.