In Senhora injustiça, No Martins employs the structure of the triptych, a classic format of religious painting, to discuss urban police violence, especially against young Black men, like the artist himself. In the image on the left, five cars and five police officers point their guns at the central canvas, in which there is a self-portrait in black and white, with his hair wrapped around his face. The covered eyes are a parody of the allegory of Justice, represented as a blindfolded white female figure, indicating that “Justice is blind.” The outline of a hand is drawn over the artist’s mouth, evoking the act of silencing, and below his face is his ID number. Barcodes, taken from tickets to a museum where the artist worked, are aligned at the bottom of the painting. The articulation between the image of the face, the hand, and the ID number also refers to police searches, in which those who are searched have to show their documents and remain silent. On the right-hand canvas, people are held against vehicles, police vans, and are lying on the ground. The sequence of the three canvases reproduces a narrative about the violence from the beginning, middle, and end of a police search, but the serenity of the self-portrait contrasts with the turbulence of the images on either side. Senhora injustiça denounces, thus, what Martins calls “social turnstiles,” impediments to the circulation of Black and poor people in the city and in cultural spaces.
— Leandro Muniz, assistent curator, MASP, 2023
