Portrait of Maria Quiteria

This portrait of Maria Quitéria was commissioned in 2020 by the IDB to Barbadian artist Adrienne 'Adri' Norris. As part of a project that sought to celebrate important female figures of the Americas, the Bank invited Norris to portray Dominican writer and activist Salomé Ureña and Brazilian independence heroine Maria Quitéria. The latter, the daughter of a small landowner in the state of Bahia, ran away from home and posed as a man to join the Brazilian independence army under the pseudonym "Soldier Medeiros". Quitéira was later decorated for her bravery in battle.
A queer artist herself, Adri Norris has devoted much of her work to portraying women who have not been sufficiently highlighted by textbooks or official history. In her series 'Women Behaving Badly,' Norris aimed at representing women of different ethnic origins and identities, as a way of accessing the stories of subjects and groups that have been systematically marginalized.