Carlos Motta (b. 1978) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores sexuality, gender, and power through historical research and collaborative practice. In 2024, Motta presented Gravidade (Gravity) at Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, and participated in Disobedience Archive, a project by Marco Scotini at La Biennale di Venezia, curated by Adriano Pedrosa. His mid-career survey Carlos Motta: Pleas of Resistance was presented at the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in 2025 and will travel to OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz in 2026.
Past solo exhibitions include career surveys at the Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá (MAMBO) (2023); The Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2022); Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín (MAMM) (2017); and Röda Sten Konsthall, Gothenburg (2015). His work has been featured in major international exhibitions, including Scientia Sexualis, Pacific Standard Time (PST), Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Los Angeles (2024); Signals: How Video Transformed the World, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (2023); Is it morning for you yet?, 58th Carnegie International (2022); ); The Crack Begins Within, 11th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art (2020); Home is a Foreign Place, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2019); Incerteza Viva, 32nd Bienal de São Paulo (2016); and Le spectacle du quotidien, X Lyon Biennale (2010), among others.
Motta has been recognized with numerous prizes and awards, including the Artist Impact Initiative x Creative Time R&D Fellowship (2023); grants from the Penn Mellon Just Futures Initiative (2023), the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (2019); and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2008). His work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Guggenheim Museum, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá; among others.
Motta is Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Practice in the Fine Arts Department at Pratt Institute.
