Dani Cavalier (1993) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Through drawings, paintings, installations, and sculptures, she explores themes related to the body, spirituality, and the history of women’s power and marginalization.

Over the past three years, Cavalier has developed her research and artistic practice around what she calls “solid paintings.” Starting from the fundamental elements of conventional painting—such as stretcher, woven canvas, color, and composition—she replaces paint and brush with colorful Lycra scraps collected from swimwear factories in Rio de Janeiro. By creating these solid paintings, the artist works with juxtapositions of color blocks and the materiality of the fabric, which replaces the traditional canvas and wraps the stretcher. The result is an interlaced composition of colors that exists without inside or outside, front or back, establishing a participatory relationship with the viewer when presented in large formats.

This research is rooted in traditional textile techniques passed down through generations of women in contexts historically separated from the so-called fine arts. Cavalier operates within this divide, blurring the boundaries between what is considered art and what is pejoratively labeled as craft.

Her recent exhibitions include Geometria Crepuscular, A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro (2024); Bronze Noturno, Galeria Refresco, Rio de Janeiro (2024); Ecos da Intimidade, Vórtice Cultural, São Paulo (2024); Do Desenho, Centro Cultural dos Correios, Rio de Janeiro (2024); and Acordes, Largo das Artes, Rio de Janeiro (2022). In June 2025, she held her first solo exhibition at Galatea, São Paulo.

Neo-neo RJ 02 (2024) is part of the Neo-neo series, in which Cavalier brings solid paintings closer to the legacy of Neo-Concretism. If Neoconcretism proposed a “new concrete,” Neo-neo layers itself upon it with irony and affection, revisiting the debate on form and color through the concreteness of the stretched fabric. The works evoke Rio de Janeiro—the body, the heat, the bikini, the light—and transform these elements into plastic fields of vibration and desire, where surface becomes skin and manual gesture turns into thought.