Iole de Freitas' first contact with art was through dance, an element that has been with her throughout her career. During the 1970s, Iole used mainly photography and Super-8 films to create works that deal with the fragmentation of the body image. In the following decade, she turned her research to three-dimensional space and developed the Aramões : sculptures structured with wires and metal tubes, fabrics and saws. From then on, sculpture prevailed, always maintaining her primary interests with the body, space and movement. During the 1990s, she approached architecture, creating works that directly relate to real space, and used translucent materials, such as polycarbonate and perforated screens.
Iole de Freitas actively participated in the Brazilian avant-garde movement and created sculptures, installations, videos and photographs. She exhibited her work at the 9th Paris Biennale, the 15th São Paulo Biennale, the 5th Mercosul Biennale and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. Her works are in the collections of the MAC – Museum of Contemporary Art and MAM – Museum of Modern Art, both in São Paulo; the Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Fine Arts and the Açude Museum, in Rio de Janeiro; the Museo de Bellas Artes de A Coruña (Spain); the Bronx Museum (USA); the Winnipeg Art Gallery (Canada); and the Daros Foundation (Switzerland). Her work is also part of private collections and has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in several cities around the world.
For critic Paulo Sergio Duarte, “[Iole de Freitas’] works point to our ignorance. They force perception to forget. They demand a new sensitive organization. From Iole’s previous works, they only present, at the center, the question of the body. Unfigured and distanced, the body continues to be the now invisible door of access. We must start from the body to reinvent space. This space that we do not know and is in the works.”