Anna Maria Maiolino makes drawings, artist books, sculpture, and video, frequently drawing inspiration from her experience as an immigrant growing up in politically unstable Brazil. Maiolino was involved in Brazil's 1960s New Figuration movement; her representational prints and drawings from these years were acts of resistance to the national military regime, rising urban inequalities, and culturally ingrained patriarchy. She would later act on a growing interest in spatial and existential issues with a shift towards Minimalism and Conceptualism, creating installations that coaxed interaction between viewer and object. Since 1989, Maiolino has worked primarily with clay, crafting impermanent labor-intensive installations that foreground her handling of the material, a reference to the unconscious and recurrent gestures of everyday human life.
Anna Maria Maiolino makes drawings, artist books, sculpture, and video, frequently drawing inspiration from her experience as an immigrant growing up in politically unstable Brazil. Maiolino was involved in Brazil's 1960s New Figuration movement; her representational prints and drawings from these years were acts of resistance to the national military regime, rising urban inequalities, and culturally ingrained patriarchy. She would later act on a growing interest in spatial and existential issues with a shift towards Minimalism and Conceptualism, creating installations that coaxed interaction between viewer and object. Since 1989, Maiolino has worked primarily with clay, crafting impermanent labor-intensive installations that foreground her handling of the material, a reference to the unconscious and recurrent gestures of everyday human life.
