Hudinilson Jr.

Hudinilson Urbano Júnior (São Paulo, 1957 – São Paulo, 2013) was a multimedia artist and a pioneer of xerographic art in Brazil. His work is noted for its exploration of the body as a basis for visual and performative experimentation.

His engagement with art began in the early 1970s, attending film sessions on art and spending time in the photography studio and lab at the Lasar Segall Museum. Collage became a central element in his work, from his early woodcuts inspired by photo transfers to collages with nude images from American magazines, where anonymous bodies interact with elements like leaves, roots, and textures.

Hudinilson studied at the Instituto de Arte e Decoração (Iadê) in São Paulo and, between 1975 and 1977, pursued fine arts at Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado (Faap), while also working as a graphic design assistant at TV Cultura. Inspired by graffiti and the work of Alex Vallauri, he began using stencils in his productions, as seen in the piece Ah, beije-me! (1979).

Between 1979 and 1982, he delved into photocopy and mail art, investigating the body through fragmentation and repetition. Alongside Mario Ramiro and Rafael França, he formed the group 3NÓS3, carrying out urban interventions during the military dictatorship, including the action Ensacamento (1979), in which monuments in downtown São Paulo were covered.

His exhibition From Detail to Exercise (1981) at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo included the series Exercise in Seeing Myself, where he reproduced body parts in a simulated sexual act with the photocopier, positioning the machine as a co-creator. Hudinilson used xerography to manipulate details and create a visual inquiry.

Between 1982 and 1984, he served as a curator and conducted xerography workshops at the Pinacoteca. He took technical courses at Xerox Brazil and performed Exercise in Seeing Myself II (1981) at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, as well as the Xerox Action exhibition (1983) at the Museum of Contemporary Art at the University of São Paulo. In Narcisse/Exercise in Seeing Myself VII (1984), inspired by the Narcissus myth, he explored his own visual identity, presenting the male nude in an analytical and obsessive way.

Hudinilson worked as a graphic designer at Zoom School, a photography school founded by Afonso Roperto, and in 2014, a comprehensive exhibition of his works was presented at the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Visual Art in Scotland.

For critic Jean-Claude Bernardet, Hudinilson’s fragmented photocopies of the body turn it into abstract landscapes, expanding the symbolic potential of his work. Hudinilson Jr. left a legacy of innovation in Brazilian art, using contemporary technologies in dialogue with performance and a profound analysis of the relationship between body and identity.

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Text: Blombô research and curation, with the support of artificial intelligence for content writing and structuring.