Marepe was born in Santo Antonio de Jesus in 1970. He lives and works in Santo Antonio de Jesus. Marepe was raised in Bahia, a region that has deeply absorbed Brazil’s distinctive Afro-brazilian culture. After studying at an art school in Salvador he returned to the village where he was born, where he continues to live and work. Marepe’s art deeply reflected his personal experiences. His method of combining everyday objects he found locally in Bahia and subtly altering their meaning recalls Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, yet in Marepe’s hands such works became endowed with the poetic sentiment and rich sensibilities of the local culture. Many of them appear casually tossed together—a work consisting only of umbrellas and ceramic fruits placed on a floor, a glued construction of flower vases found at a market, or assemblies of Christmas ornaments. Marepe’s drawings, which personify tools and carousels or produce hybrids of human beings and animals, are highly surreal and display a grotesqueness and humor emerging directly from his interior world. Frequently depicting a plasterer’s tools, a seller’s cart, and other motifs related to labor and social conditions in Bahia, the drawings reflect Marepe’s critical view of the state of the world around him.