Nottingham Contemporary
Drawing on his stint as a food delivery driver in Rio during Covid, Allan Weber riffs on life in the favela where he was born, lives and works. In a separate show, Puerto Rico’s Daniel Lind-Ramos speaks to colonialism and the climate crisis

Multidisciplinary Brazilian artist Allan Weber was born in 1992 in the 5 Bocas favela in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro. His practice fuses assemblage, installation, sculpture and photography, all of which collide at Nottingham Contemporary in ways that feel electric.

In his first major UK exhibition, Weber uses his everyday life as source material. Favelas are the self-built shantytowns on the impoverished outskirts of Brazil’s large cities. 5 Bocas, where Weber still lives and works, informs his art in a mythical and literal sense. An assemblage of geometrically aligned razor blades are emblazoned with the word “Lord”, inspired by the razor fade haircut popular in Rio. Machine guns fashioned from old cameras allude to the crime and drug dealing all too often associated with the city.