MATRIX 252: Anna Maria Maiolino

MATRIX 252 presents a selection of videos by São Paulo–based artist Anna Maria Maiolino, whose multidisciplinary practice has over the past half-century explored the viscerality of embodied experience, often obliquely through fragmentation and abstraction. Born in Italy, Maiolino moved to Brazil in 1960, living first in Rio de Janeiro, where she became involved with the various artistic movements of the time — New Figuration, Neo-Concretism, and New Brazilian Objectivity — working closely alongside artists such as Lygia Clark, Antonio Dias, Hélio Oiticica, and Lygia Pape. By the 1970s, when artists were engaging with the social and political issues of their time, the Brazilian military dictatorship (which assumed power in 1964 and lasted for over twenty years) had reached its bleakest period, and its resultant brutality became a subject for Maiolino's work. This exhibition features a group of four videos, originally shot on Super 8 film, from the 1970s and early 1980s that use the body to express the experience of living under an oppressive regime.

MATRIX 251 and 252 are organized by by Apsara DiQuinzio, curator of modern and contemporary art and Phyllis C. Wattis MATRIX Curator. The MATRIX Program is made possible by a generous endowment gift from Phyllis C. Wattis and the continued support of the BAM/PFA Trustees. Additional funding is provided by The Jay DeFeo Trust.

MATRIX 252: Anna Maria Maiolino

artist/s:
Anna Maria Maiolino

curator:
Phyllis C. Wattis