Adriana Varejão began her career in the 1980s, developing a vigorous and highly unique language from an early age. A painter par excellence, she also works in other media such as photography, printmaking, and installation. The artist expands the boundaries of painting, employing Baroque tactics such as simulation, juxtaposition, and parody to create hybrid works that constantly engage with architecture and sculpture.
Baroque or ordinary tiles, meats and cuts, mythical or imaginary beings are part of the rich lexicon that the artist uses to tell her stories. Poetic and political, her work sheds light on diverse cultural references, subverting the content and discourse of so-called official history and constantly opening us up to new possibilities, both narrative and formal.
Over nearly four decades, Varejão has had prominent exhibitions in major museums in Brazil and in major international institutions. Her recent solo exhibitions include Adriana Varejão: Sutures, Fissures, Ruins, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); Talavera, Gagosian, New York, USA (2021); For a Cannibal Rhetoric, MAM – Museum of Modern Art of Salvador; MAMAM — Museum of Modern Art Aloísio Magalhães, Recife, Brazil (2019); Other Bodies Behind, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico (2018); Transbarroco, The Sowden House, Los Angeles (2017); Kindred Spirits, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, USA (2015). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Brazil and in several other countries. He has participated in biennials such as those in São Paulo (1994 and 1998), SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2004), Bucharest (2008); Istanbul (2011); Coimbra, Portugal (2015). Adriava Varejão received the Mário Pedrosa Prize (contemporary language artist) from the Brazilian Association of Art Critics (ABCA) and the Grand Prize of Criticism from the São Paulo Association of Art Critics (APCA) for the exhibition “Histórias às margens” (Stories on the Margins), held between 2012 and 2013 at MAM-SP, MAM-Rio and MALBA, in Buenos Aires.
His work is present in the collections of the Inhotim Institute, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais (permanent pavilion); Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo; Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP); Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (MAM RJ); Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR); TATE (London); Cartier Foundation (Paris); La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Serralves Foundation, Porto; Museum of Modern Art of Sintra (Portugal); The Metropolitan Museum; Solomon R. Guggenheim (New York); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, LA; Dallas Museum of Art, Texas (USA); Hara Museum, Tokyo (Japan).
Representative galleries
Victoria Miro , London, England
Gagosian Gallery , New York, USA