Roque Boa Morte (b. Santo Amaro, Brazil) is a visual artist, photographer, and researcher whose practice explores the intersections of image, memory, and Afro-diasporic ancestralities. Rooted in the Recôncavo Baiano—his birthplace and a historical epicenter of Black resistance in Brazil—his work draws on family archives, ritual gestures, and decolonial visualities to investigate the image as a living field of testimony and reexistence.
He holds a Master’s degree in Ethnic and African Studies from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), where he developed the award-winning project “Olho por Olho: The Right to Look at the Bembé do Mercado as an Epistemological Gesture of Reversing Visual Coloniality in Brazil (2018–2022)”. Roque has also studied curatorial practices, African art history, and photography at institutions including MAC USP, UFRB, and the Escola Baiana de Fotografia.
His photographic and installation works have been featured in exhibitions across Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Mozambique, and the United States, including the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), Itaú Cultural (São Paulo), and the AfroDigital Museum of African and Afro-Diasporic Memory (Salvador). Notable projects include “Bembé, A Festa dos Olhos do Rei”, “Como se de Ventre Livre Tivesse Nascido”, and “Figas, Mãos Ancestrais”.
Roque is a recipient of the João de Obá Medal (2022) and the Edson Dórea Photography Prize (2022), and has previously taught at the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia. His practice bridges art and academia, creating visual and poetic strategies to confront histories of erasure and affirm Black life as a field of radical imagination.
Currently based between Salvador and New York, where he collaborates with Stomping Ground Photo and pursues further academic research at Columbia University, he continues to develop artistic and curatorial projects that reweave image, ritual, and resistance.