10.04 — 10.06.2013
Curador: Adriano Pedrosa
Malba inaugurates its 2013 exhibition calendar with Historias en los márgenes, the first comprehensive exhibition of Adriana Varejão, one of the most important painters of her generation.
Organized by the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM), the exhibition includes a selection of 40 works, brought together for the first time for this occasion. It covers various periods of his career, from the 1990s to the present day, with important pieces from public and private collections in Brazil and abroad, such as the MAM São Paulo and the Fundación la Caixa in Madrid.
Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the exhibition is organized chronologically and presents for the first time in Buenos Aires the most significant series of his work: Terra incógnita [Unknown Land], Proposta para uma catequese [Proposal for a Catechesis], Acadêmicos [Academics], Irezumis, Línguas e Incisões [Languages and Incisions], Ruínas de charque [Ruins of Charqui], Mares e Azulejos [Seas and Tiles], Saunas, and Pratos [Plates].
Also included are works that the artist presented at the 22nd São Paulo Biennial, Extirpação do mal (1994), and at the 24th São Paulo Biennial, the installation Reflexos de um sonho de outro expelo (1998).
Adriana Varejão's works rescue and intertwine different histories, weaving multiple narratives and references that range from art history to religious art, from tiles to ceramics, from China to Brazil (via Portugal), from colonial iconography to images produced by European travelers and 19th-century academic art, from the geometrization of architectural spaces to geometric abstraction and the modernist grid, from landscapes and seascapes to maps and voyages.
For Adriana Varejão, the margin refers to the sea, but also to that which is outside the center, hence the title of the exhibition. In the words of the curator: "Marginal stories are those that have been almost forgotten or left out of traditional history, stories that are profound or intimate, but also stories that go against the grain, postcolonial stories, subaltern stories, stories outside the center, stories from the South. In this context, Varejão's stories take a path opposite to that of the West, in a process of de-Westernization, thus gaining a political dimension."
Exhibition organized in collaboration with the Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo and the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro.
In collaboration with Victoria Miro, London | Fortes Vilaça, Sao Paulo | Lehmann Maupin, New York.
Adriana Varejão
Born in Rio de Janeiro, she is one of the best-known Brazilian names on the international contemporary art scene, with works in the collections of institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum (NY), Tate Modern (London), Fondation Cartier (Paris), Fundación la Caixa (Barcelona), and Inhotim Contemporary Art Center (Brumadinho, MG). She has participated in almost one hundred exhibitions, including solo shows at the Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2005), Hara Museum, Tokyo (2007), Fondation Cartier, Paris (2005); and group exhibitions, including the Biennials of Istanbul (2011), Bucharest (2008), Liverpool (2006), Mercosur (2005), Prague (2003), Johannesburg, South Africa (1995), and São Paulo (1994 and 1998). She participated in Panorama da Arte Brasilero in 2003 at the MAM, curated by Gerardo Mosquera.
