The gallery general director, Hena Lee, was interviewed by David Plaisant for the article Making a scene São Paulo: Paulistano artists, galleries and art fairs have emerged from the ruinous Bolsonaro years with anew urgency to make their mark, published in the Monocle magazine.

Read her responses below:

“There has always been a top-down relationship between galleries and artists,” says Hena Lee, the general director of Galeria Millan in São Paulo’s Pinheiros neighbourhood. “Not just in Brazil but everywhere.” Having worked for the Delfina Foundation and studied at the Royal College of Art in London, Lee knows plenty about the international scene, but her focus now is on Brazilian talent. “Indigenous artists are among the most prominent voices in contemporary art challenging dominant structures in Brazil,” she says, standing by a work by the late painter and activist Jaider Esbell.

Esbell’s relationship with Galeria Millan was unconventional. “He would say, ‘You don’t represent me – I represent myself,’” says Lee. With galleries, museums and collectors increasingly seeking different perspectives, Galeria Millan’s approach offers a new, fairer model. “Esbell negotiated that his work wouldn’t come alone,” says Lee. “If we wanted to work with him, we also had to work with other indigenous artists who he selected.” Also on Millan’s roster is black Brazilian artist Maxwell Alexandre, who was raised in Rio de Janeiro’s Rocinha favela. Alexandre’s images of black figures are painted on cheap, brown paper called papel pardo. Lee explains that the term pardo is implicated in colourism, used to refer to someone of mixed race. “With this material and these powerful figures, he is making a statement.”

Galeria Millan’s nurturing of artists is helping to create some of the country’s most exciting contemporary art. Though fostering Brazilian culture remains central, “the global positioning of our art and of our history” is also vital, says Lee. In 2023, Alexandre’s work was shown at The Shed in New York, while the Fondation Cartier at Milan’s Triennale showed works by Esbell and another Millan artist, Alex Cerveny. “You have to spread artists and their work among other collectors abroad,” says Lee. “They can’t just all stay here in the internal market.”