About

João (Juno) Zago is a queer visual artist working in Newark, NJ. Born in Brazil, Zago came to the US in 2005 where he’s since lived in and around Newark. In 2016 he obtained his BA in Visual Arts from Ramapo College of New Jersey.

He’s been an artist in residence at Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ since 2017, and has exhibited at Gallery Aferro, Index Art Center, Equal Space and Akwaaba Gallery all in Newark, NJ, and Catalyst Gallery in Beacon, NY. He has also exhibited at the Newark Museum of Art, Morris Museum in Morris Township, NJ, and the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, NJ. In 2020 he was one of 45 grantees of the Newark Artist Accelerator Fund. In 2023 he stepped into the role of Creative Director at Gallery Aferro.

As an artist, Zago wants to bring together disparate media and images to create process-based compositions on paper, panel and canvas. His works dwell in themes like personal introspection, religiosity, and sexuality, all while “stealing” images in a similar way to fast-paced internet culture – which sees pictures appropriated in inventive and unexpected ways with voracious speed. Zago is a mixed media, process-based painter/collage artist who uses different quotidian and dispensable materials in his practice. Magazine pages, soda bottle labels, scrap vinyl from graphic design projects. Unseemly throwaways from day-to-day life - with him they have a new home.

For a while Zago’s work consisted primarily of portraits but as material choice and color became a larger, central concern to his practice, he began to focus his attention to composition-based pieces, expanding his image vernacular and trying to dwell in abstraction – both organic and geometric – more effectively. Many of his compositions, even the ones grounded in figuration reference the grid.