Notes related to Brazil

The 35th edition of the São Paulo Biennial, the largest contemporary art exhibition in Latin America, will take place in 2023 and the Fundação Bienal launched the first curatorial text. CHOREOGRAPHIES OF THE IMPOSSIBLE presents the key concepts and ideas.

Since September, Fernanda Lopes is the new Artistic Director of the Brazilian art gallery Athena. She will be in charge of several actions such as exhibition projects, public talks, publications, accompaniment of the represented artists and innovative and experimental research initiatives. 

An institution that is more attentive and permeable to public debate, that has its own collection as a living witness to the changes. This could be one of the guiding axes of the work of the Venezuelan Julieta González at the head of the artistic direction of Inhotim, one of the main centers of contemporary art in Brazil and one of the most inspiring open-air museums in the world.

Framer Framed in Amsterdam exhibits The Silence of Tired Tongues. Curated by Raphael Fonseca, the show presents the works of thirteen emerging artists born in Brazil. The artworks in the group exhibition bring together a sense of ‘saudade’, which can be translated as a mixture of melancholy and longing.

The Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is dedicating the first comprehensive solo exhibition to the Brazilian avant-garde artist Lygia Pape (1927–2004) until July 17, 2022. Titled “The Skin of ALL” the exhibition presents the artist’s multifaceted, transgressive oeuvre, which she developed over five decades. 

Review about the exhibition Into the Great Dying: (The Steps We Take), on view until June 2022

Exhibited at the Spcrates Sculpture Park, in collaboration with Projeto Hélio Oiticica and Americas Society. Titled Subterranean Tropicália Projects: PN15 1971/2022, this immersive environment is the first realization of a never-before-executed idea by the late Brazilian artist.

On the occasion of the centenary anniversary of the 1922 Modern Art Week, a key event for the artistic avant-gardes in Brazil and which consolidated what would become known as modernism in the country, several exhibitions throughout the year (and also in 2021) revolved around, discussed, explained, replaced and 'cancelled' such an initiative. Considered a milestone in the cultural renewal of Brazilian art, the week was about to turn around in its already canonical grave.

Pinacoteca de São Paulo presents Adriana Varejão: Sutures, Fissures, Ruins, a retrospective exhibition by Adriana Varejão (Rio de Janeiro, 1964). Curated by Jochen Volz, the museum’s general director, the show proposes a narrative that highlights the diversity and complexity of her production.

The exhibition VUADORA presents for the first time in a Brazilian institution a great overview of the work of Paulo Nazareth, one of the most important artists of his generation. The exhibition, curated by Fernanda Brenner and Diane Lima, includes a combination of approximately 180 iconic works from the last two decades - such as the series Cadernos de África and the collection Produtos do Genocídio - and works specially commissioned for the occasion.

Reluctantly classified, with increasing complexity and interest, the work of Maria Martins (1894-1973) has yet to gain recognition in her native country. But a selection of some 50 pieces, on display in Rio de Janeiro through June, should help reposition the sculptor, draftswoman and engraver in the pantheon of leading Brazilian artists.

The fair takes place from April 6th to 10th at the Bienal Pavilion in Ibirapuera Park, reaffirming its leading role in the arts market and bringing together around 130 galleries, nine of which are international.

The outcome of photographic expeditions in Brazilian Amazonia carried out from the late 1990s onward, but mostly between the years 2013 and 2019, the exhibition Amazônia, by Sebastião Salgado, is arriving at Sesc Pompeia, in São Paulo, Brazil, in the month of February.

The Amazon rainforest is one of the planet’s largest and most important ecosystems, it serves as a and home to the people who inhabit the forest and to forces that impact its future and affect global climate change. These themes are explored in “Forest: Ancestry and Dystopia, presented by The55Project Art Foundation in collaboration with The Fundación Pablo Atchugarry in Miami, from February 19 to July 16,2022.

One of the key works of the 34th São Paulo Biennial literally anchors the robust and uncomfortable presence between the interstitial areas of this modernist building, so questioned today. However, its meanings go beyond the perimeters of the construction and extend to, for example, some of the civic sculptures that populate public places throughout Brazil and that are also located in the surroundings.

“Moving with great fluidity between spirituality, the production of visuality, academic reflection and political action, Heráclito is explicit when he says that he wants to ‘act, in a symbolic way, on the devastating consequences of racism and social inequality that affect the black populations'." In this way, the curator and researcher Solange Farkas (Videobrasil and ex-MAM Bahía) summarizes the approach to the production of Ayrson Heráclito, a Bahian artist who won a retrospective at the MAR (Museu de Arte do Rio) and who had an important recent solo show at the Simões de Assis Gallery, in São Paulo.

Curated by Isabella Lenzi, and running until November 20^th, Só é possível se formos 2 [It is only possible if there are 2 of us] is exhibited in the Sala Fernando Pessoa of the Consulate General of Portugal in São Paulo. The exhibition proposes a dialogue between the Brazilian Anna Costa e Silva and the Portuguese Fernanda Fragateiro, two artists from different generations, practices and trajectories, who converge in their desires to think beyond the limits of the individual.

The flows of architecture and circulation in continuous movement set the tone for the new commissioned and individual works that are exhibited now at the Inhotim Institute. There are three projects as the result of almost two years of inactivity, without openings, in the immense space of the cultural center located in Brumadinho, in Greater Belo Horizonte, capital of Minas Gerais. It is a mix between a botanical garden and a refuge for contemporary art works specially developed for the institution or that have been reformatted in this special exhibition context that extends over an old estate, now with 140 hectares of visitation.

Curated by Jaider Esbell, and within the context of the 34^th Bienal de São Paulo, the group exhibition Moquém_Surarî gathers contemporary artworks by indigenous artists. The exhibition at MAM São Paulo will include drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures referring to the visual transformations on the cosmological and the narrative Amerindian thinking.

Gertrudes Altschul (1904–1962) was a pioneering figure in Brazilian modernist photography. Despite being acknowledged in the field in Brazil, her work is known only in specialized circles, having been scantly published and exhibited—something that this exhibition, the first in a museum, and its publication intend to rectify.

Casa Triângulo exhibits Antonio Henrique Amaral: Pelo Avesso, Antonio Henrique Amaral's first exhibition at the gallery, curated by Pollyana Quintella and Raphael Fonseca. Multiple and polyphonic, Antonio Henrique Amaral (1935 - 2015) endeavored to create a body of work that would resist univocal meanings. His more than six decades of production have drawn a multifaceted path that has been the subject of recent revisions through essays and monographic exhibitions that place the artist beyond his iconic and emblematic Bananas, made between 1968 and 1975.

One of the main art events in Latin America, after a one-year postponement due to the pandemic, opens its main exhibition Faz escuro mas eu canto [Though it’s dark, still I sing] with more than one thousand works by 91 artists. Curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti (chief curator), Paulo Miyada (adjunct curator), and Carla Zaccagnini, Francesco Stocchi and Ruth Estévez (guest curators).

It’ll be the third time that BIENALSUR comes to the Brazilian embassy in Buenos Aires, in the imposing Pereda Palace. Starting September 8th, Paula Parisot, the Rio-born artist, will be presenting her exhibition Literatura del yo (“Literature of the self”), curated by Argentinian María José Herrera.

Drawing from possibilities of artistic creation through affectations, the artists Marcelo Amorim and Nino Cais present a joint exhibition at FONTE, an independent art and residency space they founded in 2013. With curatorship by Ana Roman, "Poemas a Dois e Cartas Queimadas" (Poems by Two and Burnt Letters) investigates the male body and its relations of nearness and distance with violence and love.

Over more than 15 years of history, Galeria Leme has always aimed to promote contemporary art in its multiple scopes, understanding the complexity and constant change that are part of it. It is in this sense that, in 2021, the gallery initiates Leme NFT, a project conceived to produce, promote and commercialize art in NFT format, as well as to develop this still-rising market. The project was launched last Monday, August 16th and its English version can be accessed on their website.

This is the first solo exhibition held in a Brazilian museum dedicated to the work of Erika Verzutti (São Paulo, 1971). Verzutti’s work is essential to an understanding of sculpture as it is practiced today, in Brazil and internationally. Her thought-provoking forms explore new possibilities for the medium, to the origin and materiality of sculpture, as well as its formal intelligence.

The 322 pieces that make up Espíritos sem nome (Nameless Spirits), a retrospective dedicated to the production of the Bahian Mario Cravo Neto (1947-2009) at the São Paulo headquarters of the Moreira Salles Institute, attest to his vigor as a visual artist; With the robustness of his work, he permeates media beyond photography, since he produces pieces in languages ​​such as cinema, the three-dimensional, drawing and publishing, among others.

The Brazilian artist Regina Silveira has a long career in which she tries to explore different notions of reality through her work with lights, shadows and distortions. In her five decades of artistic work, she has dealt with themes and explored media that tie in with her idea. "I choose the medium that best solves my intentions, and then I look for the skills and technical resources to make the work feasible, focusing on being a non-specialist in any medium." The artist exhibited in Europe and the American continent, much of her work is in public collections such as the Reina Sofía museum.

As a novelty this year, the presence of Latin America takes a different role and adjusted to reality. ARCOmadrid incorporates the REMITENTE. Latin American Art section, produced with the complicity of Mariano Mayer. The proposal shows the importance of Latin American art at the Fair and its essence is to facilitate and support the galleries that this time cannot travel to Madrid.

In this exhibition, the Colombian artist presents ten works in different media: drawing, video, sculpture, and installation. These explore the idea of play, movement and activation of the exhibition space.