Descripción de la Exposición Histórias at the Margins is the first survey exhibition of the work of Adriana Varejão, a leading painter of her generation. Varejão's work rescues and intertwines many histories, weaving together multiple narratives and references-from art history to religious art, from ceramic tiles to pottery, from China to Brazil, from colonial iconography to the images produced by European travelers and the art of the19th century academy, from the geometrization of architectural space to geometrical abstraction and the modernist grid, from landscapes and seascapes to maps. One element appears as a leitmotif in this hybrid and polyphonic repertoire: the body, be it ripped, cut, quartered, lacerated, in fragments or in pieces. The body is revealed as the skin and flesh of painting, inhabiting the interiors of architecture and unveiled in its ruins; and, finally, represented as saunas through metonymy. If the body is her work's recurrent theme, its spirit is baroque, full of curves and folds, excess and ornamentation, exuberance and drama. However, its mind is mestizo-it is not by chance that in her self-portraits Varejão appears as a Chinese woman, a Moor and an Amerindian. There is, above all, a concern to expose and connect marginal histories, adding personal, literary and fictional references. The Portuguese história (unlike the English history) may refer to both fictional and non-fictional texts, thus shifting painting towards literature. Marginal histórias are those that are almost forgotten or set aside from traditional history, they are profound or private histories, but also histories that go against the grain, that are told at the margins, post-colonial and subaltern histories, histories beyond the center, histories from the South, and, in this sense, they gain a political dimension. Histórias at the Margins brings together 42 works, many of them seen here for the first time, including three new ones produced specially for the MAM São Paulo, all displayed in a sequence of ten rooms. The show is organized chronologically, beginning in 1991. However, strict chronological order is sometimes broken to privilege thematic articulation between works in a single room. As this is Varejão's first survey exhibition, the selection of works chose the best examples within each of the artist's series-Terra incógnita, Proposal for a Catechesis, Academics, Irezumis, Tongues and Incisions, Jerked-Beef Ruin, Seas and Tiles, Saunas, and Plates.
Exposición. 19 nov de 2024 - 02 mar de 2025 / Museo Nacional del Prado / Madrid, España
Formación. 23 nov de 2024 - 29 nov de 2024 / Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) / Madrid, España
