Adriana Varejão

Born in 1964 in Rio de Janeiro, Adriana Varejão is one of Brazil's most internationally recognized contemporary artists. Her work critically explores colonial history, power relations, cultural construction and the memory of the body, combining painting, sculpture, installation and azulejos. Drawing inspiration from Baroque architecture, Portuguese art, cartography and Brazilian history, Varejão develops a powerful visual language in which the pictorial surface seems to crack, revealing layers of flesh, violence and buried history. Decorative motifs thus become vectors for reflection on identity, crossbreeding and post-colonial legacies. Her work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions in major institutions and is included in the collections of leading international museums. Adriana Varejão lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.