Adriana Varejão

Adriana Varejão (born 1964, Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian artist. She works in various disciplines including painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and photography. Varejão lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.[1]

Adriana Varejão, Panacea Phantastica, 2003 – 2008, at Inhotim, Brazil

Influences

References to the effects of colonialism of Brazil by Europe, are apparent in her work as well as art history and illusion.[2] Her work alludes to expansion and transformation of cultural identity, yet continues the use of her theme of understanding the past, in order to understand the present.[3]

Cultural anthropology, or the process of absorbing and incorporating foreign influence into native Brazilian culture, inspires much of Varejão’s work.[4] This movement is evident throughout Brazil’s history into the present and the dichotomy of diversity and unity is a common theme amongst contemporary Brazilian artists.[5] In Varejão’s works, she examines this theme within the contexts of race, body, identity, and the effects of colonialism.[6]

Media

Drawing upon tensions surrounding race and ethnicity in Brazil, Varejão uses installation, oil painting, and drawing to comment on the perception of race in Brazil in the twenty-first century.[7] She often starts with a cavas, adding materials such as porcelain and ceramics.[8] In her work entitled “Polvo,” exhibited at Lehman Maupin in 2014, Varejão combines color theory and casta (a social theory that influenced European paintings of Brazil’s conquest), to examine the norm of defining race in terms of skin color.[9] The series of nearly identical self-portraits forming the bulk of the work were displayed with individualized titles[10] that explained the portraits’ only differences: the titles were generated by the 1976 Brazilian census, which asked Brazilians for the first time to give their definitions of their own skin tone; the responses ranged from branquinha, “snow-white,” to morenão, roughly “big black dude.” [11]

Works

Selected works

Several of Varejão’s sculptural installations, including “Linda da Lapa”, “Folds”, and “Ruina de Charque - Nova Capela (Nova Capela Jerked-Beef Ruin),”[12] juxtapose structural uniformity and stability against human destruction.[13] These artworks consist of bisected azulejos-covered walls filled with human organs. Using these images, Varejão comments on postcolonial Brazilian social structure and implies that colonially influenced order is built upon human destruction and violence.[14][15]

Varejão created art that was on the exterior of the Olympic Aquatics Stadium, a temporary structure in which the swimming events of the 2016 Summer Olympics were held.[16]

Collections

One of the artist's largest projects to date recently opened at Inhotim Centro de Arte Contemporânea, Brazil - a specially commissioned pavilion designed in collaboration with architect Rodrigeo Cervino Lopez.[17] Her work is included in numerous collections worldwide, some of which are the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, among others.

Art market

Varejão is represented by the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York City, NY and Victoria Miro Gallery in London, UK. She holds the auction record for a Brazilian artist with a $1.8 million sale of Wall With Incisions a la Fontana at Christie's in February 2011.[18]

Exhibits

The Centro de Arte Contemporânea Inhotim in Brazil opened in 2008 and includes a pavilion dedicated to her work and built by her then husband, collector Bernardo Paz. She was included in the "Brazil: Body and Soul" exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2001, as well as in the MoMA QNS exhibition "Tempo", where she filled an entire room with the wall-based installation Azulejões (Big Blue Tiles). Her work has also been included in the Venice Biennale and Biennale of Sydney. She had solo exhibitions at Lehmann Maupin (2011 forthcoming, 2009,[19] 2003, 1999) in New York, Soledad Lorenzo (2011 forthcoming, 2002, 1998) in Madrid, Victoria Miro Gallery (2011 forthcoming, 2002) in London, Galeria Fortes Vilaca (2009, 2005) in São Paulo, the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art (2007) in Tokyo and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (2005) in Paris.

List of works[20]

Paintings by series

Drawings

Photographs

Special Projects

References

  1. ↑ Hara, Toshio, "Adriana Varejao", Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007
  2. ↑ Johnson, Ken, "Adriana Varejao at Lehmann Maupin," New York Times, January 2000.
  3. ↑ Carvajal, R., "Travel Chronicles: The Work of Adriana Varejao," New Histories, Boston, 1996, p. 168-169.
  4. ↑ Susan Fisher Sterling. "Varejão, Adriana". Oxford Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  5. ↑ Tejo, Cristiana. "NEW BRAZILIAN ART". Flash Art. Flash Art. Archived from the original on 12 November 2014. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
  6. ↑ Benschop, Jurriaan. "Adriana Varejão". ARTFORUM. ARTFORUM. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  7. ↑ "Adriana Varejão". The Guggenheim. The Guggenheim. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  8. ↑ Grosenick, Uta (2005). Women Artists in the 20th and 21st Century. Taschen. ISBN 9783822858547.
  9. ↑ Pechman, Alexandra. "‘Adriana Varejão: Polvo’ at Lehmann Maupin". ARTNEWS. ARTNEWS. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  10. ↑ "Adriana Varejão". Lehmann Maupin. Lehmann Maupin. Archived from the original on 20 November 2014. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  11. ↑ Johnson, Reed. "Adriana Varejão's Colorful Take on Brazil's Race Problems". The Wall Street Journal. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  12. ↑ "Adriana Varejao". Brooklyn Museum. Brooklyn Museum. Retrieved 11 November 2014.
  13. ↑ "Adriana Varejao's Painfully Clean Tiled Mythologies". The Huffington Post. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
  14. ↑ "Adriana Varejão". Artnet. Artnet. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
  15. ↑ Laudanno, Claudia; Olmo, Santiago B. "Adriana Varejao". ArtNexus. ArtNexus. Retrieved 12 November 2014.
  16. ↑ "Sustainable Olympic aquatics stadium unveiled ready for Rio 2016 Games". 5 August 2016. Archived from the original on 20 August 2016. Retrieved 5 August 2016.
  17. ↑ Adriana Varejão Victoria Miro Gallery, London.
  18. ↑ Katya Kazakina and Juan Pablo Spinetto (August 28, 2012), Gagosian Plans $130 Million Package for Brazil Art Fair Archived March 14, 2013, at the Wayback Machine. Businessweek.
  19. ↑ Ayers, Robert. Adriana Varejao at Lehmann Maupin ARTnews. October, 2009.
  20. ↑ Varejao, Adriana. "Adriana Varejao". Retrieved 28 April 2012.
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