Felippe Moraes
Samba Exaltação (Exaltation Samba), 2021
Urban Intervention
Edifício Mirante do Vale
Curatorial texts by Ana Roman, Alexandre Sá and Daniel Rangel
São Paulo – Brazil

The intervention Samba Exaltação, by Felippe Moraes, emerges within the context of Carnival suspended by the pandemic, symbolically occupying the void left by the absence of the festival. Conceived as a gesture to fill this collective gap, the work turns verses from classic sambas into neon signs displayed across the urban landscape, creating a luminous presence that echoes the celebration that could not take place.

Carried out at a moment when cultural centers were closed, the work shifts the exhibition space to an unexpected territory. Installed in the window of the artist’s own apartment at the Edifício Mirante do Vale, then the tallest building in Brazil, the intervention inhabits an ambiguous zone between the intimate and the public, projecting itself over the Viaduto Santa Ifigênia and the Vale do Anhangabaú.

The series is made up of four neon pieces presented sequentially over a period beginning on the Friday of Carnival and running through Easter, establishing a temporal narrative tied to the liturgical calendar as it moves through Lent. Each phrase remained on view for 13 days before being replaced by the next, adding up to 52 days in total.

The project also expands into the discursive field, gathering unpublished curatorial texts by Ana Roman, Alexandre Sá and Daniel Rangel. By weaving together city, language and collective experience, Samba Exaltação turns absence into presence and inscribes in urban space a promise of return, where song stays lit even when the celebration falls silent.

Related Texts

Agoniza mas não morre – Ana Roman

Uma pausa de mil compassos – Alexandre Sá

Um grito de luz – Daniel Rangel

Selected Exhibitions

• 2025 – Festival SESC de Inverno – Parque Municipal de Itaipava (Petrópolis, Brazil)
• 2025 – Solfejo – CAIXA Cultural Curitiba (Paraná, Brazil)
• 2025 – Solfejo – CAIXA Cultural Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
• 2024 – Apocalipse – Casa França-Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
• 2024 – Solfejo – CAIXA Cultural Brasília (Distrito Federal, Brazil)
• 2022 – O que há de música em você – Galeria Athena (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
• 2022 – Arte e Tecnologia: Uma revolução em curso – MIS SP (São Paulo, Brazil)
• 2021 – Um Brado Retumbante – Bolsa de Arte (São Paulo, Brazil)
• 2021 – Samba Exaltação – MAC Niterói (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Press

• 2025 – “Garimpo – Felippe Moraes” – DasArtes
• 2021 – “Melancolia e ausência do carnaval inspira arte em néon no centro de São Paulo – Folha de S. Paulo
• 2021 – “Felicidade Clandestina” – Revista Celeste
• 2021 – “‘Não deixe o samba morrer’, apesar da pandemia alarmante no Brasil” – Rádio USP
• 2021 – “MAC de Niterói celebra 25 anos com exposições, eventos e entrada grátis; veja a programação” – O Globo
• 2021 – Quero viver no Carnaval – Revista Caju