Rogério Reis Exhibition Turns Rio Beach Vendors into Art
Art & Culture: Rio de Janeiro
Key Facts
—Exhibition. “Não somos mula,” a solo show by veteran photographer Rogério Reis, opened on 1 August 2026 at the Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica in central Rio de Janeiro.
—Subject. The series documents the carts, coolers and improvised gadgets built by the vendors who work Rio’s beaches, framing their ingenuity as art.
—Scale. The show gathers around 120 images, combining prints and projections, most shown publicly for the first time.
—Run. It is open Monday to Saturday until 29 August 2026, with free admission at the municipal arts centre.
—Context. Reis spent a year walking the shoreline at dawn to record an informal beach economy estimated to move R$5.2 billion (about US$1 billion) a year.
Rogério Reis turns a year of dawn walks along Rio de Janeiro’s shoreline into “Não somos mula,” a 120-image study of the ingenuity that powers the city’s beach economy.
What “Não somos mula” Puts on the Wall
The exhibition centres on the everyday tools of Rio’s beach vendors: the wheeled carts, insulated boxes and homemade contraptions they use to haul drinks, food and gear across the sand. Reis photographs these objects with the care usually reserved for sculpture, drawing out their improvised design.
The title translates roughly as “we are not mules,” a phrase the workers themselves use to assert their independence. It reframes the vendors not as beasts of burden but as inventors who engineer their own equipment to survive a demanding trade.
Across roughly 120 images shown as prints and projections, most exhibited for the first time, the show shifts attention from the postcard landscape to the people who build it each day. The result reads as both a documentary record and a quiet argument about dignity and labour.
Who Rogério Reis Is
Rogério Reis is a veteran Brazilian documentary photographer long associated with Rio de Janeiro and its coastline. His work has repeatedly returned to the beach as a stage where the city’s social life plays out in the open.
For a foreign reader, that focus matters. In Rio, the beach is not a private resort strip but a shared public commons where formal and informal economies meet. Reis has spent decades reading that space, and this project distils that long attention into a single theme.
The new series was built the slow way. Reis walked the orla at dawn over the course of a year, before the crowds arrived, to catch the vendors setting up and to photograph their equipment in the low morning light.
The Beach Economy Behind the Images
The vendors Reis documents are part of a vast informal workforce that supplies sunbathers with everything from cold drinks and grilled cheese to sunscreen, hats and beach chairs. Their carts are mobile businesses, assembled from whatever materials do the job.
That trade is not marginal in scale. Reporting tied to the exhibition puts the annual value of Rio’s beach economy at around R$5.2 billion (about US$1 billion), a figure that underlines how much commerce moves across the sand each year.
Because much of this work sits outside formal registration, it rarely appears in official cultural or economic narratives. By elevating the vendors’ tools to gallery walls, the show makes an otherwise invisible system briefly visible.
A Fitting Home at the Hélio Oiticica Centre
The Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica sits in central Rio, near the Cinelândia district, in a historic building run by the city. It is named after one of Brazil’s most influential visual artists, a fitting frame for work that blurs the line between object and art.
The venue’s central location makes it easy to reach for residents and visitors moving through downtown, and admission is free. The show runs Monday to Saturday until 29 August 2026.
Placing a series about beach labour in a downtown institution, rather than a beachfront gallery, adds a distance that sharpens the point. Objects normally seen in passing on the sand are recontextualised in a quiet civic space built for looking.
Why It Resonates for Rio and Its Visitors
For expats and foreign visitors, the show offers a way into a side of Rio that is easy to consume but hard to see clearly. The vendor who sells a coconut on Copacabana is part of an economy and a craft that this exhibition asks viewers to take seriously.
It also lands amid a broader interest in Brazil’s informal workers, whose resourcefulness has become a recurring theme in photography and journalism. Reis approaches them not as a problem to be solved but as designers and entrepreneurs.
The coverage that carried the show to a wider audience, including a feature in O Globo, framed it around a single idea: the creativity of the people who work Rio’s beaches. That framing is the exhibition’s core, and its most durable takeaway.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the “Não somos mula” exhibition about?
It is a solo photography show by Rogério Reis at Rio de Janeiro’s Hélio Oiticica centre, documenting the carts, coolers and improvised tools built by the vendors who work the city’s beaches, and framing their ingenuity as art.
When and where can I see it?
The show is at the Centro Municipal de Artes Hélio Oiticica in central Rio de Janeiro, open Monday to Saturday until 29 August 2026, with free admission. It gathers around 120 images as prints and projections.
Who is Rogério Reis?
Rogério Reis is a veteran Brazilian documentary photographer known for his long focus on Rio de Janeiro and its coastline. For this project he walked the shoreline at dawn for a year to record the city’s beach vendors and their equipment.
Sources
Brasil em Folhas · Sopa Cultural · O Globo
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Sources: O Globo; Brasil em Folhas; Sopa Cultural.
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