Adriana Varejão
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About
One of the most original and significant voices in contemporary Brazilian art, Adriana Varejão is celebrated internationally as an artist whose work addresses the complex, interweaving themes of history, memory and culture with decolonial narratives.
Since the mid-1990s, Varejão has explored two juxtaposing motifs – flesh and tiles (azulejos) – drawing on the decorative tradition of her native Brazil to examine the confluence of cultures and underlying tensions: between beauty and violence, geometric order and the visceral body. The cracked tile has been a recurring motif in Varejão’s work since early in her career and in visceral monochromatic works, she draws particularly on the history of Portuguese Azulejo tilework and the legacy of Brazil’s colonial past. The artist’s ongoing Meat Ruins works render visible absent bodies implied by her tile works. These fragmentary wall and floor sculptures incorporate sections of trompe-l’oeil tilework that contain masses of material applied and painted to evoke bloodied meat. For Varejão, flesh occupies a symbolic position as a mediator of history, and in its ability to stir both seduction and repulsion. Resembling marble, the veins of fat and flesh in her Ruins make explicit the parallels in Varejão’s art between architecture and the body – these fleshy, architectonic ruins laying bare the vulnerability of bodies, buildings and even entire cultures.
Speaking about her work, the artist says: ‘My fiction does not belong to any time or place, instead it is characterised by themes dealing with rupture and discontinuity. Everything is contaminated. In my work, the formation of Brazilian culture from the colonial period onwards is used as a metaphor for the modern world.’
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Biography
Born in 1964, Adriana Varejão currently lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
In 2025, the solo exhibition Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics opened at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York, closely followed by the opening of Adriana Varejão and Paula Rego: Between Your Teeth at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon, an exhibition that highlights the points of intersection between both artists through a combined presentation of more than 100 works. In 2022, Adriana Varejão: Sutures, Fissures, Ruins–among the most comprehensive exhibitions of the artist’s work to date, featuring more than 60 works from 1985 to 2022–was on view at Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil.
Other important solo exhibitions include Adriana Varejão: Por uma retórica canibal, curated by Luisa Duarte, Museum of Modern Art, Salvador, travelling to MAMAM, Recife (2019); the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, Rome (2017); Dallas Contemporary, Texas (2015); The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2014–15); Histórias às margens (Histories at the margins), Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2012), which toured to Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, and MALBA - Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2013); Hara Museum, Tokyo (2007); Fondation Cartier Pour L'Art Contemporain, Paris (2005); and Centro Cultural de Belém, Lisbon (2005) amongst others.
A permanent pavilion devoted to Adriana Varejaõ's work opened in 2008 at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil.
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News
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Adriana Varejão talks to The New York Times about her first solo museum exhibition in New York
April 23, 2025'Each plate is like a universe. I like how they relate to my passion for ceramics, for the decorative arts and their history, and how craft can disrupt artistic hierarchies.'Read More -
Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, Lisbon
April 11, 2025On view 11 April–22 September 2025, this major exhibition brings together some 100 works to highlight the connecting threads between the two artists, with particular...Read More -
Adriana Varejão at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York
March 6, 2025On view 27 March–22 June 22 2025, the exhibition features new paintings from Varejão’s acclaimed Plate series and a site-specific outdoor sculptural intervention.Read More -
Victoria Miro at Frieze Masters with a solo presentation of works by Adriana Varejão
October 9, 2024A rare opportunity in London to see a comprehensive selection of works by one of the most original and significant voices in contemporary Brazilian art.Read More -
Adriana Varejão: Sutures, Fissures, Ruins at Pinacoteca de São Paulo
March 26, 2022This retrospective (26 March–1 August 2022) is one of the most comprehensive exhibitions ever held of Varejão’s work, bringing together for the first time a...Read More -
Now open – An Exhibition of Works by… featuring Adriana Varejão at Witte de With, Rotterdam
January 19, 2020Taking blue and white ceramics as a starting point, this exhibition (19 January–19 July 2020) of international artists explores the migration of form. The exhibition...Read More -
Interiorities, featuring Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Adriana Varejão, at Haus der Kunst, Munich
November 29, 2019The exhibition (29 November 2019–29 March 2020) focuses on interior of the imagination, as well as with the interior as a real setting, as a...Read More -
Adriana Varejão: Otros cuerpos detrás at Museo Tamayo
August 20, 2019A monographic exhibition Otros cuerpos detrás ( Other bodies behind) (24 August–10 November 2019) explores the lines of research that the Brazilian artist has developed...Read More -
Adriana Varejão: Por uma retórica canibal at MAMAM, Recife, Brazil
June 28, 2019Curated by Luisa Duarte, this major exhibition (28 June–8 September 2019) features works created from the early 1990s to present. The exhibition tours from the...Read More -
Adriana Varejão: Por uma retórica canibal at the Museum of Modern Art, Salvador
April 17, 2019Curated by Luisa Duarte, this major exhibition (17 April–15 June 2019) features works created from the early 1990s to present, with an emphasis on the...Read More -
Adriana Varejão featured in the Whitechapel Gallery's Terrains of the Body: Photography from the National Museum of Women in the Arts
December 8, 201618 January – 16 April 2017 Whitechapel Gallery Drawn from the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, U.S.), this collection display showcases photography...Read More -
Adriana Varejão included in Flesh at York Art Gallery
November 8, 201623 September 2016 – 19 March 2017 Human and animal, alive and dead, familiar and strange; this major exhibition will explore how artists represent flesh...Read More -
Adriana Varejão's Olympic Aquatic Stadium commission for Rio 2016 is unveiled
Olympic Aquatic Stadium, Rio 5 August - 21 August 2016The sea and angels in a baroque style… introducing the look of the Rio 2016 Olympic Aquatics Stadium Work by Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão will...Read More -
Adriana Varejão interviewed in the New York Times about her Rio 2016 commission
July 13, 2016Waves of Dark History Break on an Olympic Pool. By Laura van Straaten. In a few weeks, as TV cameras swoop over the Olympic Park...Read More -
Adriana Varejão in The Great Animal Orchestra at Fondation Cartier
July 2, 2016Inspired by the work of American musician and bioacoustician Bernie Krause, this exhibition (until 8 January 2017) at the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain ,...Read More
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Books
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Gallery Exhibitions
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Adriana Varejão
14 Jul – 8 Sep 2018 VeniceAn exhibition of new Saunas and Baths paintings, and Meat Ruins by the renowned Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão, her sixth exhibition at the gallery. Since the mid-1990s, Adriana Varejão has...Learn More -
Surface Work
11 Apr – 16 Jun 2018 Victoria Miro MayfairThis international, cross-generational exhibition is a celebration of women artists who have shaped and transformed, and continue to influence and expand, the language and definition of abstract painting. The exhibition...Learn More -
Adriana Varejão: Carnivorous
6 Jun – 2 Aug 2014 Victoria Miro MayfairThe artist's fifth solo presentation with Victoria Miro and her first in the Mayfair gallery. One of the most original voices in contemporary Brazilian art, Varejão's diverse practice comprises painting,...Learn More -
Adriana Varejão: Polvo
16 Oct – 9 Nov 2013 London Gallery IIA new body of work by the artist, in her fourth solo presentation at the gallery. One of the most original voices in contemporary Brazilian art, Varejão's diverse practice comprises...Learn More -
Adriana Varejão
7 Sep – 1 Oct 2011 London Gallery IIVictoria Miro is delighted to present a new body of work by Adriana Varejão in her third solo presentation at the gallery and her first show in London since 2004....Learn More -
Adriana Varejão: Saunas
14 Sep – 9 Oct 2004 London Gallery IIn the Sauna paintings, Varejão explores questions inherent to painting and geometry, with a sensitive use of light and shade to represent simple, contemporary tiled interiors that the artist describes...Learn More -
Extended Painting
14 Jan – 14 Feb 2004 London Gallery IIAnne Chu, Hiroko Nakao, Jacco Olivier, Grayson Perry, Tal R, Adriana Varejão This exhibition features six artists from Asia, the Americas and Europe whose work extends the possibility of painting...Learn More -
Adriana Varejão
30 Jan – 28 Mar 2002 London Gallery IAdriana Varejão fills the Lower Gallery with a monumental wall based installation, Macau Wall , while the Upper Gallery houses new individual floor and wall based work. The fine colour...Learn More -
Raw
7 May – 30 Jun 2000 London Gallery IYayoi Kusama. Francesca Woodman, Robin Lowe, Adriana Varejão, Isaac Julien, Doug Aitken, Abigail Lane, Hadrian Pigott, Brad Lochore, Cecily Brown, Chris Ofili, Andreas Gursky, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Inez van Lamsweerde,...Learn More
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Contact Form
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