Adriana Varejão
Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Adriana Varejão wants us to recognise that, whether we’re looking at a painting or at the history of a country, there may be more going on than meets the eye – or rather, that our eyes may be deceiving us. Drawing on the history of her native Brazil, Varejão paints images of walls covered with the traditional Portuguese tiles commonly found in Brazil. But what are these beautiful tiles covering up? Varejão’s work disturbingly points to a very bloody history. For Liverpool, she has created not a painting but a display of real tiles, beautifully decorated with botanical images. But if we look closely, we can see that the plants depicted here are far from innocent.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2005 Chambre d’échos/Câmara de Ecos, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France; DA2 – Domus Artium 2002, Salamanca, Spain; Centro Cultural Belém, Lisbon, Portugal
2004 Victoria Miro Gallery, London, UK
2003 Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York, USA
2002 Galeria Fortes Vilaça, São Paulo, Brazil
2001 Azulejões, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
2000 BildMuseet, Umeå, Sweden
Selected Group Exhibitions
2006 ARS 06 – Museum of Contemporary Art KIASMA, Helsinki, Finland
Collection of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, MOT, Tokyo, Japan
2005 Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, USA; Centro Cultural Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico
Desarrumado, MARCO, Museo de Arte Contemporánea de Vigo, Vigo, Spain
2004 V SITE Santa Fe Biennial, Santa Fe, USA
Brazil: Body Nostalgia, The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, Japan; The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, Japan
2003 1st Prague Biennale: Peripheries Become the Centre, National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic
Panorama da Arte Brasileira 2003, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Yanomami – L’espirit de la Forêt, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France
2002 Tempo, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2001 Brazil: Body and Soul, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA
2000 XII Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia
Versiones del Sur, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain
1999 Trace, The Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Further Reading
Adriana Varejão – Chambre d’échos/Echo Chamber, Paris: Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain/Arles: Actes Sud, 2005. Texts by Philippe Sollers, ‘Vertigo by Adriana Varejão’, and Paulo Herkenhoff, ‘Saunas’
Valérie 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 Varejão, São Paulo: Takano Editora Gráfica, 2001. Texts by Louise Neri, ‘Brave New World: Adriana Varejão’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
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