Adriana Varejão began her career in the 1980s, developing a vigorous and very unique style from an early age. A painter par excellence, she also works with other media such as photography, engraving, and installation. The artist expands the boundaries of painting, using baroque tactics such as simulation, juxtaposition, and parody to create hybrid works that constantly dialogue with architecture and sculpture.
Baroque or ordinary tiles, flesh 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 contents and discourses of so-called official history and constantly opening us up to new possibilities, both narrative and formal.
Over the course of nearly four decades, Varejão has had prominent exhibitions at major museums in Brazil and 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 – Aloísio Magalhães Museum of Modern Art, 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 shows in Brazil and several other countries. She has been present at biennials such as those of São Paulo (1994 and 1998), SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2004), Bucharest (2008); Istanbul (2011); Coimbra, Portugal (2015). Adriava Varejão received the Mário Pedrosa Award (contemporary language artist) from the Brazilian Association of Art Critics (ABCA) and the Grand Prize of Critics from the São Paulo Association of Art Critics (APCA) for the exhibition “Histórias às margem” (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; São Paulo Museum of Art (MASP); Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art (MAM RJ); Rio Art Museum (MAR); TATE (London); Cartier Foundation (Paris), La Caixa Foundation (Barcelona); Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam); Serralves Foundation, Porto; Sintra Museum of Modern Art, (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
Fortes D'Aloia & Gabriel Gallery , Sao Paulo
Victoria Miro , London, England
Gagosian Gallery , New York, USA