Larissa de Souza: Phenomenal

It’s the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I’m a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That’s me.

Maya Angelou, “Phenomenal Woman” (1978) 

Albertz Benda is pleased to present Phenomenal, the second New York exhibition by Larissa de Souza (b. 1995, São Paulo), featuring a new group of paintings that draw on the devices of stagecraft—sleight of hand, misdirection, disappearance, reveal — as a metaphor for femininity, transformation, and self-possession. Taking its title from Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, the “phenomenal” in de Souza’s paintings is located not in spectacle but in the daily insistence on dignity and complexity.

Across mixed-media canvases that combine acrylic and oil with fabric, found objects, and hand-stitched threads, de Souza meditates upon themes of memory, ancestry, and womanhood. She often draws on recurring personal motifs—floating hands, shells, and other charged symbols—as anchors for poetic, psychologically rich narratives. Color is structural as well as emotional, activating each surface as a stage for encounter.

“There is something untamable in the presence of a woman who moves through the world like an open question,” writes curator Keyna Ellison. “De Souza paints as one who summons— giving form to what resonates within her, and by consequence, within all of us.”  

While often referring to the Afro-Brazilian experience through folk traditions and cultural practices, de Souza’s paintings concern us all. Phenomenal examines the act of performance as a framework for understanding women’s visibility and resilience through visual metaphors. The Juggler (2025) makes this explicit: a woman keeps five elliptical forms levitating in the air, each enclosing a scene from her life; tending a child, cleaning, preparing at a mirror, walking by the sea. Here, theatricality functions as method rather than escape, a way to show how care, labor, and selfhood operate simultaneously.  

Each painting is a declaration of self-possession and of art’s capacity to build, repair, and imagine otherwise. In Still, I Rise (2025), a magician’s assistant lies mid-sawing, her body separated into two boxes on a checkered stage. The saw hangs in midair, unaccompanied by the magician’s hand. Fruit spills from the opening as a white dove ascends against a burst of light. A scene once associated with illusion and control becomes one of self-command and transcendence. 

Through these acts of transformation, de Souza constructs a vision of womanhood that is at once intimate and collective, political and sensual, joyful and defiant. Ellison describes these works as “situations—entangling, unsettling, provoking, and awakening what lies silent.” Her paintings do not seek to please; they insist on presence. They build a world where feminine strength and tenderness stand together as a form of magic.