Adriana Varejão

Adriana Varejão’s practice centers on the use of cracked ceramic tiles, which the artist both depicts in paint and uses as literal components in her work. A baroque sense of simulation and contemporary ruin infuses her oeuvre, alongside a meticulous attention to craft. Varejão’s major themes include plurality, hybridization, history, memory, and colonialism as they relate to her native Brazil. She frequently employs a motif of blue-and-white azulejo tiles, which were brought to Brazil by Portuguese colonizers; in some works, Varejão recreates their intricate patterns in oil paint and plaster on canvas, while other sculptures and installations feature ruptured tile that exposes bloody viscera beneath. Varejão has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Dallas Contemporary, the Museu de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro, the Fondation Cartier, and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston. In 2008, a permanent pavilion dedicated to her work opened at Instituto Inhotim in Brazil. Her work has sold for seven figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, the Stedelijk Museum, the S.M.A.K. Museum of Contemporary Art, and Tate Modern.