Ana Elisa Egreja: The Flight of Color @ Jessica Silverman
Jessica Silverman is pleased to present the first US solo show of Brazilian artist Ana Elisa Egreja, “The Flight of Color,” on view from July 16 to September 5, 2026. In 15 new oil paintings, Egreja transforms the everyday into the subtly miraculous. Working at life size, the artist fills domestic interiors with wild animals, flora, and foods drawn from her life in São Paulo. With intense colors and precise brushwork, her paintings bridge realms conventionally kept apart: the native and the imported, the sacred and the commercial, the sublime and the absurd. Her scenes are not surreal but magic realist; as she explains, they are “improbable, but not impossible.”
Egreja describes herself as a “contemporary archaeologist.” Drawn to everyday objects that carry strong cultural identity or evoke shared memories, she uses the still life to preserve the collective consciousness in time. She catalogs what captivates her—from furniture to food packaging—and recombines them into richly symbolic compositions, staging arrangements of foods, flowers, textiles, and found objects. Egreja builds on Dutch still life traditions, while embracing the freedom of collage.
Ana Elisa Egreja (b. 1983, São Paulo, Brazil) received her BFA from Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado, São Paulo. Egreja has previously enjoyed institutional solo exhibitions at Direktorenhaus, Berlin; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil; Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo; and Sesc Ribeirão Preto, Brazil. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; The Bomb Factory, London; Palazzo Coardi di Carpeneto, Turin; Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Somerset House, London; and Sesc Pompeia, São Paulo, among many others. Her work is held in the collections of Deji Art Museum, China; Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Italy; Franks-Suss Collection, UK; Kistefos Museum, Norway; Museu de Arte do Rio, Brazil; Museu de Arte de São Paulo; Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia; Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Brazil; and Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. Egreja lives and works in São Paulo and is represented by Almeida & Dale.