With sharp pencils and blood red hues, Nú Barreto’s drawings highlight the socioeconomic disparities prevalent throughout the African continent. Using dry mediums, collage, reconstituted materials and new media, Barreto’s work has a strong symbolism expressed through form, colour and patterns. The artist’s alter ego, visible throughout his work, appears distorted by pain and fear, his agonised face bearing witness to the reality of the socially and economically dispossessed in the artist’s native Guinea-Bissau.

He has participated in solo and group exhibitions across the five continents including AFRO, rencontres avec l’art de l’Afrique contemporaine, Centre Culturel l’Escale, Levallois (2019); 0.10 RELOADED Avant-Garde, Galerie Sabine Knust, Munich (2018) and the itinerant Lumières d’Afriques, Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris (2015-2018). His works are included in the collections of PLMJ Foundation, Lisbon and Pro-justitia Foundation of Porto and Macau, MUCANE Victoria Museum of Brasilia and the West African Monetary Union Collection.