Adriana Varejão

Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão is known for her extraordinary installations of ornamental blue tilework, large-scale sculpture, and her renowned "tile" paintings that powerfully consider issues of identity and colonialism. Adriana Varejão is one of the most prominent artists living and working in Brazil today, whose rich and diverse artistic oeuvre is fueled by the mythic pluralism of Brazilian identity and its histories. Drawing upon the aesthetic traditions and visual legacy of colonialism and transcultural exchange, she has reconceived and extended the concept and practice of painting by fusing mediums, surfaces, and artistic lineages in totally unprecedented ways. In so doing, she disrupts entrenched narratives by bringing forth obscured stories and uncomfortable truths from the margins. In recent times, Varejão has shifted her gaze from her native Brazil and its diverse roots in Europe, Africa, and Asia to Mexico, expanding the cross-fertilization of distinct threads of Latin American art and culture in her own work.