Check out moments when Brazilian art shone abroad

This year, the national art scene celebrated with joy the announcement that, for the first time, a Brazilian, Adriano Pedrosa from Rio de Janeiro and the artistic director of Masp, would lead the curation of the next Venice Biennale, the most important and oldest art biennial in the world. The appointment highlighted the growing relevance and influence of Brazilian artistic agents and institutions on the global art stage. From curators and critics to museums, institutes, art fairs, and, no less important, artists, the presence of Brazilian art is hardly unnoticed on foreign soil.

Following the tremendous success of the first list of ten moments when Brazilian art made headlines worldwide (published in July this year), and based on suggestions from our audience on social media, we have selected another ten instances where national artists expressed, abroad, the originality and inventiveness characteristic of Brazilian visual art production.

Iole de Freitas at Documenta Kassel (2007)

Between June and September of that year, the magnificent Fridericianum – one of Europe’s earliest public museums and a key exhibition venue for the quinquennial show, reaching its 12th edition – opened its structures to the sculptural fervor of Iole de Freitas (1945). From the walls of one of the first-floor rooms of the building, extensive twisted steel tubes leaped haphazardly through the air of the space. Sheets of polycarbonate, sometimes transparent, sometimes translucent, followed the curves of the metallic material, creating a series of open shelters that encapsulated the bodies passing through. Nevertheless, the installation extended to the exterior of the building. On the facade, Iole’s creation snaked through windows and columns of the seventeenth-century edifice.

The work continued the artist’s longstanding exploration of themes such as the relationship between the body, artwork, and space, as well as the aesthetic potentials of light, a theme present since her early photo and film creations in the 1970s. On German soil, Iole combined these two interests with the language of Brazilian and Russian constructivist traditions, composing utopian architectures capable of expanding the ways of perceiving, seeing, and moving in space.

Rivane Neuenschwander at the New Museum (2010)

Brazilian conceptualism kicked off the second decade of the century with acclaim on the Lower East Side in New York, featuring a mid-career retrospective of the artist from Minas Gerais, Rivane Neuenschwander (1967). Despite its title, A Day Like Any Other, curated by Richard Flood, provided an unusual journey for visitors, showcasing installations, paintings, videos, and objects that elevated the mundane and everyday to the status of the extraordinary.

Among the exhibited works, I Wish Your Wish (2003) gave a cosmopolitan twist to the Brazilian tradition of Senhor do Bonfim ribbons. The installation, consisting of around ten thousand silk ribbons, expressed wishes collected by the artist from previous projects. Spectators were invited to take one from the wall’s perforations and, in return, leave strips of paper with their aspirations, feeding a cycle driven by the impulses of desire. This cyclical dimension of the world also appeared in Rain Rains (2002), an immersive installation composed of aluminum buckets suspended in the air. From these, a portion of water dripped slowly onto other buckets resting on the ground. Neuenschwander’s calculated rain extended for four hours. Afterward, the museum team manually replenished the water source, highlighting the Sisyphean nature of natural phenomena and human labor.

Adriana Varejão at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston (2014)

For the first time, an individual exhibition dedicated to the work of Rio de Janeiro native Adriana Varejão (1964) was held on U.S. soil. The selection of works was curated by Anna Stothart, who chose to thematically organize a set of pieces developed from 1993 onward. In total, 23 works exposed the Boston audience to the artist’s interest in discussing how the lengthy process of colonization shaped what we understand as the Brazilian people.

In the exhibition, Varejão emphasized one of the essential topics for understanding the socio-historical development not only of Portuguese America but also of other parts of the continent: the racial factor. In addition to the famous reliefs made with references to Lusitanian tilework – from which viscera and patches of bodily matter emerge – the theme is addressed in the series Polvos (Octopuses). In one of the works, Tintas Polvo (Octopus Inks, 2013), 33 tubes filled with different shades of oil paint underscore the complexity of racial relations in Brazil. The work originated from the 1976 census, which asked participants to describe their own skin color. “Coffee with milk,” “burned from the beach,” and “runaway donkey” were some of the 136 variations captured by the survey, appropriated by Varejão in a reflection on color as language and identity.

Lygia Pape at the Met Breuer (2017)

Once again, the career of a national artist was being appreciated for the first time in an individual exhibition in the United States. With A Multitude of Forms, The Met Breuer, the now-closed branch of modern and contemporary art of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduced New York to the creative freedom of Lygia Pape (1927-2004), one of the most influential figures in Brazilian art in the second half of the 20th century. The exhibition comprised reliefs, paintings, photographs, videos, and performances, spanning the different phases of the artist’s five-decade career.

Pape’s neo-concrete expressions were not confined to the museum walls. On this occasion, Fifth Avenue served as the stage for the reproduction of one of her performances: the iconic Divisor (1968). A massive white fabric meandered through one of the main arteries of the U.S. city. Its movement was guided by the steps of interacting spectators, who inserted their heads into the numerous slits scattered throughout the textile material. Beyond the sense of collectivity, the work triggered a totalizing aesthetic experience, breaking down the boundaries between art and everyday life, so that body, artwork, and the urban environment became one.

Cinthia Marcelle at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017)

It was with the installation Chão de caça (2017) that the artist from Minas Gerais, Cinthia Marcelle (1974), earned an honorable mention from the international jury at the Venice Biennale, representing Brazil in its pavilion during the 57th edition of the exhibition. The work, curated by the German Jochen Volz, was perceived by experts as “an enigmatic and unbalanced space in which we cannot feel secure.”

Indeed, it was discomfort and danger that Marcelle flirted with in the two galleries that composed the pavilion. An inclined floor made of welded ventilation grates, typical of subways in major urban centers, covered the entire interior space. Among the openings of the grated structure, the artist inserted small pebbles, which were also grouped at some ends of the room. In one core of the work, a set of stakes driven into the ground suspended fragments of white fabric. In another, a screen reproduced the video Nau, made with Tiago Mata Machado, in which men with covered faces disassembled, from the inside out, a massive roof with clay pieces. More than suggesting the possibility of escape or rebellion, what Marcelle portrayed on the Italian peninsula was the uncertain and unbalanced scenario into which Brazil was entering.

Tarsila do Amaral at the MoMA (2018)

Once again, one of Brazil's greatest 20th-century art figures was in the spotlight in New York. In "Inventing Modern Art in Brazil," the North American city uncovered the role played by São Paulo native Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) in formulating an artistic practice fueled by typically national themes and narratives.

Curators Luis Pérez-Oramas, Stephanie D’Alessandro, and Karen Grimson meticulously worked to demonstrate not only the artist's relevance to the thinking and imagination of a modern Brazil, but also her contributions to the canon of international painting. To this end, they brought together works from Latin American, European, and US collections, presenting viewers with paintings, drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, and historical documents that covered both Tarsila's extensive artistic production and her biography. Works like "Abaporu" (1928) and "Antropofagia" (1929) expressed how surreal figures and a palette of "purest blue," "vivid yellow," and "singing green" – in the artist's own words – solidified the process of devouring and swallowing foreign cultures with the intent of conceiving a cultural model for Brazil.

Burle Marx at the New York Botanical Garden (2019)

This was the largest exhibition ever held at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx to that date. "Brazilian Modern: The Living Art of Roberto Burle Marx" showcased, throughout the garden's extensive grounds, Burle Marx's (1909-1944) dedication to an artistic and architectural practice connected to nature conservation. In the "Explorer’s Garden" section, plants typical of tropical climates, such as those found in Brazil, experienced the peculiarities of temperate lands. In the "Water Garden," bromeliads, palms, and a fern wall complemented the paintings, drawings, and tapestries displayed in "Art of the Sitio," a section that paid homage to Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, a significant institution in Rio de Janeiro.

With roots firmly planted in the triad of architecture-landscaping-painting, the exhibition highlighted how the artist united the aspirations of Brazilian modernism with the purposes of a public environment grounded in the principles of environmental conservation and citizenship. This was evident in the "Modernist Garden" wing, a project by architect Raymond Jungles whose floor design was inspired by the curves of the Copacabana boardwalk's patterns, one of Burle Marx's most emblematic creations.

Maxwell Alexandre at the Palais de Tokyo (2021)

Black bodies, faceless and elegantly dressed, occupied the white cubes of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris with "New Power," an exhibition that introduced the work of Rio de Janeiro native Maxwell Alexandre (1990) to the French capital for the first time. The show displayed 42 works conceived as an unfolding of the highly regarded "Pardo é Papel" ("Brown is Paper") series, organized by curator Hugo Vitrani. Through his paintings, Alexandre brought to one of Europe's major art centers a set of questions concerning Black people's access to traditional artistic codes and spaces.

By portraying his characters on brown paper, positioned before canvases and frames – symbolic elements of a racially white and Eurocentric art history – Alexandre forged an exhibition within the exhibition. In the show he created, the social segregations intrinsic to the art system had their structures subverted: Black children, young people, and the elderly, now in positions of power, enjoy their right to culture and art, circulating freely and spontaneously through historically restricted spaces of prestige.

Barbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca at the New Museum (2022)

With "Five Times Brazil," a half-dozen versions of Brazilian culture and society were presented by the duo Barbara Wagner (1980) and Benjamin de Burca (1975) to New Yorkers. The artists' first retrospective in the U.S., curated by Margot Norton alongside Brazilian curator Bernardo Mosqueira, occupied the New Museum's third floor, showcasing a total of five films made since 2015. These films captured not only the rhythms, sounds, and customs of the country, but also the sociopolitical turbulence faced by the nation.

In the projections, it was the multiplicity of ways of being, acting, and feeling within different Brazilian communities that permeated the museum's spaces. In "Faz que vai" (2015), the duo joined forces with four dancers from Pernambuco in an investigation into the place of Frevo in the face of new sounds in the region. In "Estás vendo coisas" (2016), it was the Brega scene of Recife and its manifestations that attracted Wagner and Burca's lenses. "Terremoto Santo" (2017) delved into the world of gospel music in Pernambuco, exploring the daily lives of young pastors and singers from rural areas. In "Swinguerra" (2019), which had represented Brazil at the 58th Venice Biennale two years prior, dance competitions from the outskirts of Recife took center stage. The fifth video, "Fala da Terra" ("Talk of the Land"), highlighted national activist practices, such as the Coletivo Banzeiros, which, with members of the MTST (Homeless Workers' Movement), demonstrates the power of the struggle for the longed-for agrarian reform and the hoped-for reduction of social disparities.

Claudia Andujar at The Shed (2023)

After a long journey with stops at the Instituto Moreira Salles (São Paulo), Fondation Cartier (Paris), and Barbican Centre (London), "The Yanomami Struggle," an exhibition featuring photographs by Claudia Andujar (1931), landed at The Shed cultural center in New York City, curated by Thyago Nogueira with guidance from Yanomami leader Davi Kopenawa. In the city, the exhibition took on new dimensions, expanding its scope with an additional 80 drawings and paintings, as well as videos made by members of the honored group.

These works joined the more than two hundred photographs by Andujar, an artist who has been using her lens since the 1970s to advocate for the defense of the Yanomami indigenous people. By amplifying the perspectives and narratives present in the Swiss-Brazilian artist's work, the proposed dialogue between indigenous artistic production and Andujar's extensive body of work internationally cemented the long history of friendship and collaboration, as well as the struggle and resistance, between one of the largest indigenous groups in the Amazon region and the nonagenarian photographer.