Anna Maria Maiolino

Luisa Strina Gallery (Sao Paulo), Feb-Mar/24

In São Paulo, Luisa Strina Gallery is now showing a solo show by Anna Maria Maiolino (b. 1942), an Italian-born Brazilian artist. It is entitled ‘To want not to want, to desire, and to fear’ and will be on display till 16 March 2024.

The artist emigrated in the post-war 1950s with her family to Venezuela. Then, in 1960, they relocated to Rio, Brazil. Hence, she has faced both the effects of WWII in Europe and the hard times of the Brazilian military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Anna Maria Maiolino, Untitled, from the series 'Body — Landscape (Photopoemaction),' 2018. Courtesy of Luisa Strina Gallery.

So, in this way, it is not unexpected that her work deals with multiple realities, whether they are social, political, or cultural. She works in different media: photography, painting, sculpture, video, performance, and engraving. Recently, in 2022, she was given a major retrospective at Tomie Ohtake Institute, in São Paulo, Brazil. Last November, she won a prize, the Golden Lions for Lifetime Achievement of the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, upon, according to the biennial’s chief-curator, Adriano Pedrosa, her embodiment of the theme of that show, “foreigners everywhere”.

It is between the announcement of Maiolino as the winner of that prestigious prize and its ceremony that this show at Luisa Strina Gallery takes place.

Gallerist Luisa Strina founded her sake name gallery in 1974 – now it is a 50-year institution. It was a pioneering enterprise by then, when it helped fostering the careers of then-young conceptual artists Waltercio Caldas, Antonio Dias, Cildo Meireles, and Tunga – all of which are highly recognized in Brazil and abroad for decades now. Nowadays, it works with or represents Brazilian or foreign artists in the likes of Thiago Honório, Renata Lucas, Marcius Galan, Cinthia Marcelle, Jorge Macchi, Mira Schendel, Panmela Castro and Carlos Garaicoa.

Anna Maria Maiolino, Untitled, from the series 'Between Inside and Outside', 2012 . Courtesy of Luisa Strina Gallery.

In this show, you will find 45 works – drawings, sculptures, photographs, and video – from the 1990s to the present. Regarding this diversity of media, Maiolino said to journalist João Perassolo that “I am not a one key artist”, “I experience media that allow me to wander through my fantasy and my will to experiment”.

The exhibit’s curator is Kiki Mazzucchelli, the gallery’s artistic director. According to her, as the artworks shown are abstract and do not tell stories, one manner to understand the show is to think of the point and the line.

Anna Maria Maiolino, Untitled, from the series 'Propícios', 2014. Courtesy of Luisa Strina Gallery.

This show occupies both exhibiting rooms at the gallery. On the works displayed across the premises, you will explore and experience the many temporalities and materialities that Maiolino has been developing for decades. Maiolino’s works deal with the void, the object-subject relationship, the line, the organic, and the non-organic, among other topics.

If you want to visit it with London Art Walk, you may book a bespoke tour. So, we will take you to not only see this striking show by this respectable, remarkable and award-winning artist, but also to other galleries in the same Jardins neighborhood (Dan, Marcelo Guarnieri, Zipper, and Casa Triângulo, just to name a few). If you want to visit museums nearby, you can include Masp or Moreira Salles Institute, for instance.

Luis Sandes for London Art Walk
February 2024