Adriana Varejão

Adriana Varejão, Panacea Phantastica, 2003. Photogtaph by Luigi Stavale

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Adriana Varejão’s (b. 1964, Rio de Janeiro) paintings are cultural and artistic excavations. In particular, they trace the historical conjunctions that have produced contemporary Brazilian art, including Portugal’s long history of cultural cross-fertilisation with China. This complexity is exemplified by Varejão’s incorporation of traces of the transplanted Chinese artistic tradition with the Baroque influences of colonial culture.

Portuguese Catholicism has produced some startlingly violent imagery, with graphic representations of martyrdom and disrupted flesh that literally dismember the classical ideal of the human body. These images have been absorbed into the indigenous cultural traditions of Brazil, in turn influencing the style and content of local Christian iconography.

Portuguese artists exploited the narrative potential of Chinese ceramic decoration, especially the cobalt blue that became so popular with Europeans. It is common in both Portugal and Brazil to find blue tile decoration on the outside of buildings. Inside churches, panels of these tiles often tell stories from the lives of the saints. These narratives invariably end badly, with bodily degradation, flaying, dismemberment and various forms of penetration. A very popular secular use of the same medium is found in butchers’ shops to promote their wares. It is common to find images of joints of meat, poultry or fish hanging on hooks in these situations. The parallels with religious iconography are hard to miss.

Varejão recalls the curious sight of damaged ceramic panels that were restored at some time in the past without any apparent attempt to reconstruct the original design. As a result, the figures have been fragmented and the frame has appeared within the composition in a bizarre configuration. For a modern viewer this fragmentation and disruption of the frame has distinctly cubist (and indeed post-structuralist) overtones, but it is also a compelling metaphor for cultural bricolage. The artist has used this strange history of iconographic conjunctions as a starting point for her paintings, often referring back to the blue tiles.

Adriana Varejao’s piece for International 06 entitled Panacea Phantastica was a collection of tiles decorated with exquisite drawings of plants. The visual language was distinctly European, mimicking the form and colours of a type of tile commonly found in the historic buildings of Portugal. But the plants illustrated were decidedly exotic, each one the raw material used in the manufacture of a hallucinogenic substance. Some of these (marijuana, for example) are familiar visitors to Europe; others, such as plants used in Amazonian tribal rituals, remain unknown outside their native context.

In the group of works made for TRACE (1999) Varejão cut ragged sections of the painted surfaces and peeled them back like a skin to reveal what lied beneath. This turned out not to be the expected dry wall or crumbling plaster, but something closer to organic form of viscera further echo of the flaying of the saints.

Adriana Varejão at Liverpool Biennial 2006

Panacea Phantastica , 2006
Silk-screen printing on tiles
Variable dimensions
Exhibited in Pubic realm 

Adriana Varejão at Liverpool Biennial 1999

Tilework in Live Flesh, 1999
Wood, aluminium, polyurethane and oil paint
Collection Isabella Prata and Idel Arcuschin
Courtesy of Galeria Camargo Vilaç, São Paulo

Tilework with Horizontal Incision, 1999
Wood, aluminium, polyurethane and oil paint
Collection Museum of Modern Art Sintra
Courtesy of Galeria Camargo Vilaç, São Paulo

Tilework with Vertical Incision, 1999
Wood, aluminium, polyurethane and oil paint
Collection Andrea and José Olimpio Pereira
Courtesy of Galeria Camargo Vilaç, São Paulo