
ANA MARIA TAVARES (b. 1958, Brazil)
“We have left, but we have not yet arrived.”
Looking to the legacies of modernist architecture in Brazil, Ana Maria Tavares creates futuristic non-places, and meditations on institutions, systems, and information. Her intricate installations are fantastically urban in their visual vocabulary, suggesting parallels with not only Oscar Niemeyer, but also with Giovanni Piranesi--the 18th-century Italian artist who created fictitious architectural landscapes--and with the labrynthine world of M. C. Escher.
Writing about her work, curator Dan Cameron notes, “Tavares has not set out to critique the situation in which she finds herself, so much as to suggest that within each collectively understood interpretation of a public space, there is always another possibility, often contradictory and sometimes filled with wonder, waiting to be explored. Sometimes, the only thing required to draw out this hidden reality is the simple act of treating all public spaces like empty sets, waiting to be filled with actors whose parts have not yet been written.”
Tavares earned her bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1982 from the Armando Alvares Penteado Foundation in São Paulo. She completed her MFA in 1986 from the Art Institute of Chicago, and PhD in Art from the University of São Paulo in 2000. She was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002. She is currently Professor of Art at the University of São Paulo. In 2005, she was artist-lecturer at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and she was the Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in-Residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2006-2007. In 2014, she was the Lynette Autrey Visiting Professor at the Humanities Research Center at Rice University.
2016 | No Lugar Mesmo: Uma Antologia de Ana Maria Tavares – Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil |
| Ana Maria Tavares - Forgotten Mantras - Silvia Cintra + Box4, Rio de Janeiro, RJ |
2015 | Ana Maria Tavares: Airshaft for Piranesi, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo, Brazil |
2014 | Atlântica Moderna: Purus e Negros, Museu Vale, Espírito Santo, Brazil |
| Euryale Amazonica, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
2013 | Natural Natural: Paisagem e Artifício, Centro Cultural Banco do Nordeste, Fortaleza, Brazil; Centro de Arte e Cultura Dragão do Mar, Fortaleza, Brazil |
| Ana Maria Tavares: Deviating Utopias, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, TN, USA |
| Tautorama, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil |
2011 | Desviantes, Galeria Silvia Cintra, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil |
2010 | Paisagens Perdidas (Para Lina Bo Bardi), Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil |
2008 | Ana Maria Tavares, Schusev State Museum of Architecture, Moscow, Russia |
| Fortuna e Recusa ou Ukiyo-e (a imagem de um mundo flutuante), Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Ana Maria Tavares, Kröller-Müller Musuem, Arnhem, Holland |
2005 | Paisagem para Exit II, Culturgest, Porto, Portugal |
2004 | Enigmas de uma Noite com Midnight Daydreams, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil |
Noturnos (da série Caça-Palavras), Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP), São Paulo, Brazil | |
2002 | Entrückte Körper_GRU/TXL, Galerie Vostell, Berlin, Germany |
| Numinosum, Galeria Brito Cimino, São Paulo, Brazil |
2001 | Middelburg Airport Lounge with Parede Niemeyer, De Vleeshall, Middelburg, Holland |
| Numinoso, De Kabineeten van de Vleeshal, Middelburg, Holland |
2000 | Projeto Zona Instável, Pavilhão das Cavalariças, Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Estação II, Centro Universitário Mariantonia, São Paulo, Brazil |
1998 | Relax’o’visions, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura (MuBE), São Paulo, Brazil |
1997 | Porto Pampulha, Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil |
1996 | Rotatórias, Galeria Millan, São Paulo, Brazil |
1994 | Chicotes, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
1993 | Chicotes, Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brazil |
1990 | Ana Maria Tavares, Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brazil |
1986 | Ana Maria Tavares, Superior Street Gallery, Chicago, IL, USA |
1982 | Objetos e Interferências, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil |
Casa da Cultura de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil
FRAC Haute Normandie, Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, France
Fundação ARCO, Madrid, Spain
Fundação Serralves, Porto, Portugal
Kröller-Müller Museum KMM, Arnhem, Holland
Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Niterói, Brazil
Museu de Arte Contemporânea de São Paulo (MAC), São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Museu de Arte de Brasília (MAB), Brasília, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (MAM), São Paulo, Brazil
Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (MuHKA), Belgium
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
Stichting Sonsbeek Internationaal, Arnhem, Holland
Universidade de Uberlândia (UFU), Uberlândia, Brazil