| Dates: | born 1964
| | Biography: | (artist biography as of 2006)
Adriana Varejão
Born 1964, Rio de Janeiro Brazil.
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Selected solo exhibitions
Chambre d'echos/Camara de Ecos,
2005, Fondation Cartier pour I'art
contemporain, Paris, France
DA2 Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca.
Spain;
Centra Cultural Belem. Lisbon. Portugal
Victoria Miro Gallery, 2004, London, UK
Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 2003 New
York, USA
Galena Fortes Vilaga, 2002, Sao Paulo,
Brazil
Azulejoes, 2001, Centra Cultural Banco
do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
BildMuseet, 2000, Umea, Sweden
Selected group exhibitions
ARS 06-Museum of Contemporary Art
KIASMA, 2006, Helsinki, Finland
Collection of the Fondation Cartier pour
I'art contemporain, 2006. MOT, Tokyo,
Japan
Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic
Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art,
2005, San Diego Museum of Art, San
Diego, USA;
Centra Cultural Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico
Desarrumado, 2005, MARCO, Museo de
Arte Contemporanea de Vigo, Vigo,
Spain
V SITE Santa Fe Biennial, 2004, Santa
Fe, USA
Brazil: Body Nostalgia, 2004, The
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo,
Japan
The National Museum of Modern Art,
Kyoto, Japan
1st Prague Biennale: Peripheries
Become the Centre, 2003, National
Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Panorama da Arte Brasileira 2003,
Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo,
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Yanomami L'espirit de la Foret. 2003,
Fondation Cartier pour l’art
contemporain, Paris, France
Tempo, 2002, The Museum of Modern
Art, New York, USA
Brazil: Body and Soul. 2001 Solomon R.
Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
XII Biennale of Sydney, 2000, Sydney,
Australia
Versiones del Sur. 2000, Museo
Nacional Centra de Arte Reina Sofia,
Madrid, Spain
Trace, 1999, The Liverpool Biennial of
Contemporary Art, Tate Liverpool,
Liverpool, UK
Further reading
Adriana Varejao Chambre d'echoslEcho
Chamber, Paris: Fondation Cartier pour
Cart contemporain/Arles:
Actes Sud, 2005. Texts by Philippe
Sollers, 'Vertigo by Adriana Varejao'. and
Paulo Herkenhoff,
'Saunas' Valerie Breuvart (ed.), Vitamin
P New Perspectives in Painting.
London/New York: Phaidon Press, 2002,
Text by Peter Doroshenko
Disparities & Deformations: Our
Grotesque. Santa Fe: SITE (Santa Fe s
Fifth International Biennial), 2004. Text
by Robert Storr Louise Neri (ed.).
Adriana Varejao, Sao Paulo: Takano
Editora Grafica, 2001, Texts by Louise
Neri, 'Brave New World:
Adriana Varejao's Baroque Territories',
and Paulo Herkenhoff, 'Glory!
‘The Great Surge' Gilda Williams and
Clare Manchester (eds.), Fresh Cream
Contemporary Art in Culture, London:
Phaidon Press, 2000. Text by Gerardo
Mosquera
| | | Source: | "Liverpool Biennial Liverpool 06", exhibition catalogue | | | Date of source: | 2006 |
|
| Biography: | (artist biography as of 1999)
1964 Born in Rio de Janiero.
Lives and works in Rio de Janiero
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1999 Museu Rufino Tamayo, Mexico
1998, Pavilhao Branco, Insituto de Arte
Contemporanea, Lisbon
1997 Museo de Arte Contemporaneo
Sofia Imber, Caracas
1996 Galeria Camargo Vilaca, Sao Paulo
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1999 Cinco Continentes e uma Cidade,
Museu da Cidade, Mexico
1998 XXIV Bienal Internacional de Sao
Paulo, Sao Paula
Desde el Cuerpo: Alegorias de la
Feminino, Museu de Bellas Artes,
Caracas Whitechapel Art Gallery,
London
A Arte Contemporanea da Gravura Brazil-
Reflexao 97, MUMA,
Museu Metropolitano de Arte de
Curitiba, Curitiba, Brazil
Asi Esta La Cosa: Arte Objeto e
Instalaciones de America Latina,
Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo,
Mexico City
1996 New Histories, ICA-Institute of
Contemporary Art, Boston
1995 "TransCulture," Identity and
Alterity: Figures of the Body 1895/1995,
La Biennale di Venezia 46, Esposizione
Internationale dArte, Palazzo Giustinian
Lolin, Venice; Benesse Haouse
Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum,
Okayama City
Africus: Johannesburg Biennale,
Johannesburg
1994 Mapping, Museum of Modern Art,
New York XXII Bienal Internacional de
Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo
1993 Panorama da Arte Brasileira Atual,
Museu de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo
1989 U-ABC, Stedelijk Museum,
Amsterdam; Fundacao, Calouste
Gulbenkian, Lisbon | | | Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | | Date of source: | 1999 |
|
| | Personal Profile: | Adriana Varejão's paintings are cultural
and artistic excavations. In particular,
they trace the historical conjunctions
that have produced contemporary
Brazilian art, including Portugal's long
history of cultural cross-fertilisation
with
China. This complexity is exemplified by
Varejao's incorpo¬ration of traces of the
transplanted Chinese artistic tradition
with the Baroque influences of colonial
culture.
Portuguese Catholicism has produced
some startlingly violent imagery, with
graphic representations of martyrdom
and disrupted flesh that literally
dismember the classical ideal of the
human body. These images have been
absorbed into the indigenous cultural
traditions of Brazil, in turn
influencing the
style and content of local Christian
iconography.
Portuguese artists exploited the narrative
potential of Chinese ceramic decoration,
especially the cobalt blue that became
so popular with Europeans. It is common
in both Portugal and Brazil to find blue
tile decoration on the outside of
buildings. Inside churches, panels of
these tiles often tell stories from the
lives
of the saints. These narratives invariably
end badly, with bodily degradation,
flaying, dismemberment and various
forms of penetration. A very popular
secular use of the same medium is
found in butchers' shops to promote their
wares. It is common to find images of
joints of meat, poultry or fish hanging on
hooks in these situations. The parallels
with religious iconography are hard to
miss.
Varejao recalls the curious sight of
damaged ceramic panels that were
restored at some time in the past
without any apparent attempt to
reconstruct the original design. As a
result, the figures have been fragmented
and the frame has appeard within the
composition in a bizarre configura¬tion.
For a modern viewer this fragmentation
and disruption of the frame has distinctly
cubist (and indeed post-structuralist)
overtones, but it is also a compelling
metaphor for cultural bricolage. The artist
has used this strange history of
iconographic conjunctions as a starting
point for her paintings, often referring
back to the blue tiles.
In the group of works made for TRACE
she has cut ragged sections of the
painted surfaces and peeled them back
like a skin to reveal what lies below. This
turns out not to be the expected dry wall
or crumbling plaster, but something
closer to organic forms or viscera: a
further echo of the flaying of the saints.
| | Personal Profile Source: | "Trace, 1st Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art", Festival catalogue | | Personal Profile Source Date: | 1999 | | Description: | Varejão's oeuvre concentrates on the
representative and illusionist faculties of
painting. However, its primary intention
is not narrative or representational, but
rather a 'disarrangement' of
representation: a strategy for
representing in order to dis-represent.
This allows her to deconstruct the
social, cultural and linguistic meanings
implicit in the possibilities of painting.
These same capacities are used
simultaneously to create new critical
meanings, transforming them into the
very subject of her work, which is at
once a dissection and an apotheosis of
painting.
However, Varejão has not questioned the
pictorial and representational processes
in the abstract or through
generalisations; she has done so
through images taken from colonial
discourse or referring to the history of
Brazil. The tradition of the Portuguese
painted tiles has been her main source.
From these she has moved on to the
supporting wall itself, imitating pure
white tiles, with a particular constructive
interest in these serial elements. And
after painting so many simulations of
walls and tiles it was not surprising that
she ended up commissioning real
painted tiles, with which she has built
installations. At the same time analytical
and emotive, ranging from minimal to
baroque, Varejão's work is a rewriting of
colonial history through its imaginary.
Gerardo Mosquera
| | Description Source: | "Liverpool Biennial Liverpool 06", exhibition catalogue | | Description Source Date: | 2006 | | Gender: | female | | Type: | person |
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