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Biography

ANA MARIA TAVARES
[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.

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Selected Solo Exhibitions

2021
Fractured Field, SOS. Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP), São Paulo, Brazil

2019
O Real Intocável, Galeria Silvia Cintra, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2018
Rotações Infinitas, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil

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, Brazil

2015
Cárceres a Duas Vozes: Piranesi e Ana Maria Tavares, Museu Lasar Segall, São Paulo, Brazil
Deviating Utopias from Paxton to Burle Max (from the Social Hieroglyphs series), Galerie Stöckle Hauser, Stuttgart, Germany
Deviating Utopias with Victoria Regias, Rolls Royce Studio, Galerie Weekend, Berlin, Germany
Sinfonia Tropical para Loos, Galeria Vermelho, 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

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Selected Public Collections

Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Culturgest, Lisboa, Portugal

Casa da Cultura de Ribeirão Preto, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil

Coleção Projeto Leonilson. São Paulo, Brazil

Fundação ARCO, Madrid, Spain

Fundação Marcantônio Vilaça. São Paulo, Brazil

Fundação Serralves, Porto, Portugal

Haute Normandie, Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain (FRAC), Ville de Sotteville-lès-Rouen, France

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

SESC Collection

Stichting Sonsbeek Internationaal, Arnhem, Holland

Universidade de Uberlândia (UFU), Uberlândia, Brazil