Past Events
ANNA MARIA
MAIOLINO
Order and
Subjectivity
25 October-
15 December 2007
Images
Biography
As part of the Brazilian Culture Month 2007,
organised in cooperation with the Embassy of Brazil, the
Pharos Centre for Contemporary Art presents an exhibition of
works by renowned Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino
curated by Michael Asbury. The opening of the exhibition
will be held on 25 October 2007 at 8.00pm.
Anna Maria Maiolino’s work has for some time
been considered as central to the development of late 20th
century art in Brazil and Latin America, and the artist has
increasingly received international recognition as a key
figure in contemporary art generally. Over a career that
spans almost 50 years, Maiolino has continuously
re-appraised her production, initiating new lines of
enquiry, often accompanied by the use of new media. It may
at first seem surprising that despite such ‘new-beginnings’,
her production appears so coherent. Indeed, seen in
retrospect, it maintains a narrow relation with the pressing
issues of its time whilst keeping its own internal logic,
appropriately defined as a demarcation of a ‘territory of
immanence’. Productive tensions have operated throughout the
stages of her career, forming a contextual matrix that
ranges from the personal to the historical, from the
quotidian to the monumental. Subjectivity thus accompanies
the work’s relation to the wider history of art, guiding the
ambivalence between the artist’s innate modesty and her
impossible desire for completeness, a stubborn search for a
sense of totality in the work. This exhibition presents
recent and historic works by the artist, ranging from
drawings and photographs, to films and an installation.
About the artist
Anna Maria Maiolino was born on 20 May 1942 in Scalea,
Calabria, Italy to an Ecuadorian mother and an Italian
father, the youngest of ten children. In 1954 she immigrated
with her family to Caracas, Venezuela. She moved with her
parents to Rio de Janeiro in 1960 and studied painting there
with Henrique Cavaleiro and Ivan Serpa from 1961, and
woodcut with Adir Botelho from 1962, when she met a number
of Brazilian artists who would later form the New Figuration
group. She married Rubens Gerchman in 1963. She held her
first solo exhibition in Caracas in 1964. During the late
1960s she produced a series of works using the written word,
fabric and upholstery stuffing, such as Glu, Glu, Glu…,
O Heroi, and A Espera. Many of these were
included in the New Brazilian Objectivity exhibition,
organised by Hélio Oiticica and others in 1967 at the Museum
of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro. In 1968 she became a
Brazilian citizen, and later spent over two years in the
United States. In 1971 Maiolino was recommend by the
Uruguayan artist Luiz Camnitzer to receive a study grant
from the Pratt University to attend a workshop at the
International Graphic Pratt Centre. After separating from
Gerchman she returned to Rio de Janeiro with her children.
In 1974 she received an award at the 1st
Brazilian Festival of Super-8 Film for her film In-Out (Antropofagia).
Since then she has participated in numerous group
exhibitions and held various solo shows. These include the
XXI National Salon of Modern Art in 1971, Mitos Vadios,
organised by Hélio Oiticica and Ivald Granato in 1978. In
1982 she spent a year outside Brazil revisiting Rome, New
York and Caracas. From 1984 to 1989 she lived with the
Argentine artist Victor Grippo in Rio de Janeiro and Buenos
Aires. In 1994 Maiolino featured on the cover of Inside
the Visible, an acclaimed international itinerant
exhibition curated by Catherine de Zegher. She participated
in the XXIV Bienal de São Paulo in 1998. In 2001 she held a
major solo exhibition at the Drawing Centre in New York. A
retrospective exhibition curated by Paulo Venancio and Rina
Carvaral was held at the Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo in
2005 and MAC, Miami in 2006.
