biography
Born in Scalea, Italy, 1942. Lives and works in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Drawing from the everyday female consciousness and from an oppressive, censorial dictatorship – as experienced in 1970s and 1980s Brazil – Italian-born Anna Maria Maiolino has produced works steeped in vital force, in a wide range of languages and media throughout her artistic career: from performance to sculpture, from videos to photography, installation and drawing.
Maiolino was involved in Brazil’s 1960s New Figuration movement: her representational prints and drawings from these years were acts of resistance to the national military regime, rising urban inequalities, and culturally ingrained patriarchy. She would later cultivate an interest in spatial and existential issues with a shift towards Minimalism and Conceptualism, creating installations that coaxed interaction between viewer and object. Since 1989, Maiolino has started working with clay, crafting impermanent labor-intensive installations that foreground her physical handling of the material, references to the unconscious and recurrent gestures of everyday life.
Maiolino’s works are based on processes of creation necessarily paired with destruction, and almost constantly on matters of identity, from the subjective and universal point of view. Developing a dialogue between opposing and complementary categories, her artistic practice dissolves between dichotomies between the inside and the outside, between emptiness and matter, ancient and contemporary.
Born in Scalea, Italy, 1942. Lives and works in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Drawing from the everyday female consciousness and from an oppressive, censorial dictatorship – as experienced in 1970s and 1980s Brazil – Italian-born Anna Maria Maiolino has produced works steeped in vital force, in a wide range of languages and media throughout her artistic career: from performance to sculpture, from videos to photography, installation and drawing.
Maiolino was involved in Brazil’s 1960s New Figuration movement: her representational prints and drawings from these years were acts of resistance to the national military regime, rising urban inequalities, and culturally ingrained patriarchy. She would later cultivate an interest in spatial and existential issues with a shift towards Minimalism and Conceptualism, creating installations that coaxed interaction between viewer and object. Since 1989, Maiolino has started working with clay, crafting impermanent labor-intensive installations that foreground her physical handling of the material, references to the unconscious and recurrent gestures of everyday life.
Maiolino’s works are based on processes of creation necessarily paired with destruction, and almost constantly on matters of identity, from the subjective and universal point of view. Developing a dialogue between opposing and complementary categories, her artistic practice dissolves between dichotomies between the inside and the outside, between emptiness and matter, ancient and contemporary.
Maiolino has presented solo shows in numerous international institutions, among which: psssiiiuuu, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo (2022); Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2021); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah (2020); Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); PAC Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2019); MOCA, Los Angeles (2017); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (2014); Malmo Kunsthalle (2011); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporânea, Santiago de Compostela (2011); Fundació Antoní Tàpies, Barcelona (2010); Camden Arts Centre, London (2010); Pharos Centre for Contemporary art, Cipro (2007).
Recent group shows include: senzamargine – Passages in Italian Art at the Turn of the Millennium, MAXXI, Rome (2020-22); Pop América, 1965–1975, Nasher Museum of Art, Duke University, North Carolina (2019); A Tale of Two Worlds, Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires (2018); Radical Women: Latin American Art 1960-1985, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2017); Delirious: Art at the Limits of Reason, The Met Breuer, New York (2017); Acervo em Transformação and Histórias da Infáncia, MASP, Sao Paulo (2016); La Grande Madre, Palazzo Reale, Milan (2015); The World Goes Pop, Tate Modern, London (2015). Maiolino has been invited to several international biennials such as La Biennale de Lyon (2017), 10th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju (2014) and Documenta 13, Kassel (2012).
gallery exhibitions
images

Sem Título (Untitled), serie Corpo/Paisagem - Fotopoemação (from Body/Landscape - Photopoemaction series), 2018
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm; 61.5 × 91.5 cm framed, each

Sem Título (Untitled), serie Corpo/Paisagem - Fotopoemação (from Body/Landscape - Photopoemaction series), 2018
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm; 61.5 × 91.5 cm framed, each

Sem Título (Untitled), serie Corpo/Paisagem - Fotopoemação (from Body/Landscape - Photopoemaction series), 2018
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm; 61.5 × 91.5 cm framed, each

Sem Título (Untitled), serie Corpo/Paisagem - Fotopoemação (from Body/Landscape - Photopoemaction series), 2018
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm; 61.5 × 91.5 cm framed, each

Untitled, serie Entre o Dentro e o Fora (from Between Inside and Outside series), 2014
Molded cement on metal table
42 × 32 × 40 cm, table: 31x36x45 cm

Untitled, from series Elaborações, 2012
Photos in color, wooden frame, metal
72 × 148,5 × 77,2 cm overall
Photo: Lorenzo Palmieri

Untitled, from series Elaborações, 2012
Photos in color, wooden frame, metal
72 × 148,5 × 77,2 cm overall
public exhibitions
press
Anna Maria Maiolino and Ana Mendieta Take The Stage at Galleria Raffaella Cortese
Widewalls
December 8, 2019
‘I Allowed Myself to Be Eaten’: Anna Maria Maiolino on the Cultural Cannibalism of Brazil
Frieze
August 18, 2019
publications

Ana Maria Maiolino : Anna's skin
Cosac & Naify Edições
São Paulo
2016

Anna Maria Maiolino
König Books
London
2010

Vida Afora / a Life Line
Drawing Center
New York
2002
video
Anna Maria Maiolino, AL DI LÀ DI
2019
Performance di Anna Maria Maiolino, con la partecipazione dell'artista Gaya Rachel e la collaborazione di Flavio Kactuz, prodotta dal PAC Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea di Milano.
Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary
2019
Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary at Whitechapel Gallery, 25 September 2019 – 12 January 2020. Courtesy Whitechapel Gallery.
In Atto
2015
Performance by Anna Maria Maiolino with Sandra Lessa at Galleria Raffaella Cortese, via Stradella 1, Milan. April 30, 2015. Video by Alessandro Lentati.
