André Feliciano (São Paulo, Brazil, 1984) lives and works between São Paulo and New York. He holds a bachelor's degree in Fine Arts (2007) and a teaching degree in Art Education (2010), both from FAAP, and a master's degree in Visual Poetics from the Universidade de São Paulo (2014). Since the 2000s, he has developed a visual practice that takes the photographic camera as a central icon, reworked in small-scale formats and varied materials. His work brings together photography, sculpture, installation and drawing, with a strongly playful and chromatic character.
The son of a photographer and an art therapist, Feliciano began his career with color photograms: chemical prints on motion-picture film, made using direct light or the light of fireflies. He then incorporated drawing into his research before bringing his figurations into three-dimensional form. The artist's best-known works bring together botany and the photographic camera: he begins with living elements such as trees, plants and flowers, immortalizing them in bronze casts, and restores flowering to the plant realm through small resin flower-cameras that neither record images nor exercise evaluative judgment. These "flower-cameras" seem to observe the viewer, returning the gaze through their lenses.
In his technical repertoire, Feliciano combines centuries-old methods with contemporary procedures. He draws on salted paper printing, one of the earliest photographic printing processes, created by William Henry Fox Talbot around 1839, and applies platinum baths to his images. He works with toning, a late-19th-century technique that alters the tones of black-and-white photographs, and uses hand-coloring with oil paint, a practice that has existed since the invention of the daguerreotype. In a recent process, he scans the film from a bellows camera conceived according to the golden ratio to produce large negatives, which are then transferred onto canvas. The artist treats the photographic image as something that must be sown and nurtured in order to bloom, placing photography within the temporality of nature, tied to cycles of germination.
Feliciano has held three solo exhibitions at Zipper Galeria: O Ateliê Fotográfico de André Feliciano (2024), Ecologia Fotográfica (2021) and Sob o luar fotográfico (2012). He also presented Fotografe para ver at Farol Santander (São Paulo, 2022); Cultivando a Filosofia da Fotografia at SESC Carmo (São Paulo, 2015) and A natureza fotográfica da arte at Galeria Superfície (São Paulo, 2014).
He has taken part in group shows such as Floraissance Vivarium at the Graz Museum (Austria, 2024); ArTeMs / Jardim Fotográfico at Santander Cultural (São Paulo, 2021); Photographic Greenhouse at the Annenberg Space for Photography (Los Angeles, 2019); four editions of Photoville at Brooklyn Bridge Park (New York, 2012, 2013, 2016 and 2018); PANDORA at Estación Espacial (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2016); Abre Alas at Galeria A Gentil Carioca (Rio de Janeiro, 2015); Sprouted at Bosi Contemporary (New York, 2013); Projecto MULTIPLO at the MoMA PS1 Art Book Fair (New York, 2012); Festival de Arte e Gastronomia at MAM-SP (2012); Small Photographic Garden at Bonni Benrubi Gallery (New York, 2011); Ecológica at MAM-SP (2010); Prêmio Energias na Arte at Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, 2009); Projeto Tripé at SESC Pompeia (São Paulo, 2009); Verbo at Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo, 2007); and Nós at the Museu de Arte Brasileira FAAP (São Paulo, 2007, touring).
He received the Mostras de Artistas no Exterior award from the Fundação Bienal de São Paulo (2010). He has been an artist-in-residence at the Tokyo Photo Festival (Japan, 2025), Red Bull Station (São Paulo, 2014) and the Social Summer Camp Vila Alegre / Residência Forense (Chile, 2014). He is the author of four books published under the Florescentista concept: Cultura Florescentista (editor, 2010), Educação Florescentista (2009), Arte Florescentista (Editora Altana, 2008) and Dois amantes que se amam mas não se mexem / Literatura Florescentista (Editora Altana, 2008).