Adriana Varejão (b. 1964)

Private Collection, San Juan 

Adriana Varejão entre carnes e mares, Cobogó, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, p. 36, illustrated in color

This work on canvas is well stretched. There are no retouches in the face. The applied ornaments are all well applied. The work is dirty, but cleaning is not recommended. No adjustment to the surrounding area is recommended either. The work should be hung as is.
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Since first appearing on the international stage in the early 1990s, Adriana Varejão has consolidated her position as a leading force of contemporary Brazilian art. Recently honored with her first solo museum show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and a 2012 retrospective at The Modern Art Museum in São Paulo, Adriana Varejão represents alongside Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, and Vik Muniz, the first generation of Brazilian artists to have attained international acclaim.

Mining artifice and sensuality with 17th and 18th century historical references, Varejão's work annihilates any attempt at formal analysis. Her approach to art making embodies radical experimentation and a profoundly personal reading of cultural cannibalism or anthropophagy. A term first coined in the 1920s by Brazilian modernist poet Oswald de Andrade in his "Anthropophagist Manifesto,” anthropophagy served to “cannibalize” the cultural contribution of European colonizers, consuming, mutilating, and ultimately transforming it to create an authentic Brazilian culture--one better suited for the modern era. 

Varejão's ongoing courtship with the Baroque--arguably the most original and poignant quality in her work--grounds her painting on the European tradition. Like Rembrandt, Soutine, and Bacon before her, Varejão's fascination with flesh permeates her work with a visceral condition absent in the work of her contemporaries. 

Painted in 1991 at the onset of her career, Gêmea (Twin) explores the materiality of paint through the lense of self-portraiture; a recurrent theme recently reexamined by Varejão in the 2014 Polvo Portraits. As an early expression of her artistic persona, Gêmea inaugurates a career long investigation into the politics of colonialism and miscegenation in her native Brazil. Exquisitely textural and introspective, the present work confirms Varejão's incomparable and theatrical artistry.