ART CITIES:N.York-Adriana Varejão
Adriana Varejão has developed a rigorous practice that is informed by cultural and historical research. Each series is based on intense investigation into fields such as art history, anthropology, colonial trade, demography, and racial identity. Her early work resulted in graphic depictions highlighting historical inaccuracies and hierarchies of power during Brazil’s colonial period, often referencing the subjugation of the native peoples by Portuguese conquistadors and the evangelization by Catholic missionaries.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive
Adriana Varejão in her solo exhibition “Kindred Spirits” include works from her two most recent series: “Kindred Spirits”, 29 portraits of the artist donning the face painting and body ornamentation of Native American tribes intermixed with markings derived from artworks by Minimalist and Contemporary American artists, and the “Mimbres” paintings, which reference the visual culture of the Mimbres people who inhabited the American Southwest in the 11tt Century. Together these bodies of work elaborate on Varejão’s longstanding interest in colonialism’s effect on the aesthetics of identity. Adriana Varejão is especially influenced by theories of mestizaje (a term for the mixing of ancestries) and cultural anthropophagy as proposed by the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade, who urged artists to “cannibalize”, rather than reject, cultural components of their country’s colonizers. The idea of empowering oppressed peoples through the assimilation of outside influences is reinforced through Varejão’s mixture of global artistic mediums and styles. Her approach has resulted in a diverse body of work that can be both humorous and grotesque in its assessment of humankind’s history of coexistence. This exhibition serves as a continuation of the artist’s 2015 solo exhibition “Kindred Spirits” at the Dallas Contemporary, in which Varejão looked to art history, both Native American as well as within the Western canon, for inspiration, producing a tableau that reinterprets the Eurocentric perspective of the New World. In viewing the “Mimbres” and “Kindred Spirits” series together, Varejão demonstrates how Native American approaches to line, color, and shape influenced 20th century art, especially Minimalism. Both bodies of work weave together stories of distinct artistic traditions to emphasize the constant evolution and exchange of influences that shape culture and identity.
Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, 201 Chrystie Street, New York, Duration: 21/4-19/9-6/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com
