Almeida & Dale’s contribution to ArtRio 2024 highlights the diversity of approaches of women artists in Brazil, spanning a period from the 1920s to the 2000s. Featuring works by Adriana Varejão, Anna Maria Maiolino, Beatriz Milhazes, Louise Bourgeois, Eleonore Koch, Ione Saldanha, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Maria Leontina, Mira Schendel and Tarsila do Amaral, the project offers a panorama of the evolution of themes and techniques that intersect with key moments in the history of art. Rather than adhering to a single thematic focus, the curatorial approach emphasizes the multiplicity of languages and strategies employed by these artists, revealing their dialogues with the aesthetic movements and social contexts of their respective times.

The major transformations in Brazilian art during the mid-20th century are exemplified by Lygia Pape’s reliefs and Lygia Clark’s Bicho (projeto para um planeta), part of her iconic series of articulated, manipulable sculptures created in the 1960s. The larger Bichos, such as the one featured in the exhibition, invite viewers to engage their entire body in manipulating the work, reflecting the evolving participatory nature of Clark’s artistic research. The title [Project for a Planet] suggests an expansive vision that Clark associated with her exploration of architecture and space, themes further developed in her later works.

By the late 1960s, the experimental and disruptive spirit of Brazilian art had taken on new political dimensions in response to the intensifying military regime. In this context, Anna Maria Maiolino emerged with conceptual and political experiments that questioned identity, the body, and exile through interdisciplinary approaches spanning sculpture, painting, drawing, and performance. Her piece Situação Geográfica – Alma negra daAmérica Latina is part of the series Mapas Mentais, in which the artist creates diagrams, graphs, and maps of her personal life, including her geographical displacements and lived experiences. The work also resonates with the collective experience of Latin American citizens in the 1970s, when many countries on the continent experienced dictatorships that led to political persecution and exile.

Adriana Varejão and Beatriz Milhazes, each in their own way, delve into Brazilian history and culture. Varejão critically engages with the country’s colonial past through appropriation, displacement, and recontextualization of various references. In Carne a la Taunay, she reinterprets the painting Vista tirada do Morro da Glória (1820) by Nicolas-Antoine Taunay, a member of the French Artistic Mission to Brazil. Through a process reminiscent of surgical intervention, Varejão dissects the painting as though it were flesh, serving its pieces on decorated plates to evoke the colonial trauma of a land occupied and consumed.

Beatriz Milhazes, who emerged on Rio de Janeiro’s art scene in the 1980s, is known for her vibrant and intricate works that mergeBrazilian popular culture with modernist influences. Her featured paintings showcase the chromatic exuberance typical of her style, often inspired by natural elements and Brazilian decorative traditions. Her compositions, dense with overlapping shapes
and patterns, create a dynamic interplay of circular, floral, and geometric forms. Milhazes employs a unique collage technique, paintingshapes on sheets of plastic, which are then transferred
to the canvas. This process allows for layered compositions that offer a textured, collage-like surface.