Notes related to Brazil

The largest exhibition ever dedicated to the work of Judith Lauand, with more than seven decades of production.

The 13^th edition of the Mercosul Biennial, anchored in the Trauma, dream and flight tripod and finished last November, had encouraging developments, especially due to the outstanding presence of emerging artists, the strong contact with the public and the resumption of powerful spaces and traditional attractions of the event, such as the Cais do Porto. However, there were problems in the organization of the exhibition, the most serious episode of which was the '(dis)invitation' of names to exhibit works, and a certain frustration with pieces that would have a technological appeal.

The first solo exhibition in the United States of the afro-brazilian artist Arthur Bispo. Co-curated by Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Ricardo Resende, and Javier Téllez, with Tie Jojima.

The Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA) presents Political/Subjective Maps: Anna Bella Geiger, Magali Lara, Lea Lublin, and Margarita Paksa. It will explore how these four visionary Conceptual artists have appropriated the visual language of maps to highlight entrenched power structures; mine social, political, emotional, and personal subjects; and imagine new ways of apprehending the world.

The exhibition Madalena Santos Reinbolt: una cabeza llena de planetas (A head full of planets) is the first solo exhibition of the Brazilian artist at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo.

MALBA presents a panoramic exhibition by Anna Maria Maiolino (Scalea Italy, 1942) with more than fifty years of works that include paintings, drawings, woodcuts, sculptures, photographs, videos, sound pieces and installations in an attempt to capture the prismatic spirit of the artist.

Painting as the basis and as a problem, affective bonds and forms of unlearning. These are some of the themes that outline the exhibition "A Slow Coming - Chapter I", a new exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MAC) in Niterói, Brazil.

Including works by artists such as Panmela Castro, Antonio Obá, the duo Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca as well as Jonathas de Andrade, the exhibitions unpack and update issues brought up in the newspaper "Quilombo", published by Abdias Nascimento from 1948 to 1950.

Somewhat fused forms, in a dismantling that seems continuous, signaling a kind of tired geometry. The banal brilliance of a chromatic automotive cover in what could have been the label of a crumbling and volatile language typical of large urban agglomerations, in a tenuous cross between street art and graffiti.

On the bicentennial anniversary of Brazil Independence, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) presents the collective exhibition Brazilian Histories, proposing a critical reflection on the country’s history seen through an plural perspective.

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.