Focus On: Anna Maria Maiolino
Galleria Raffaella Cortese presents Focus On: Anna Maria Maiolino, the fourth instalment in this series of in-depth viewing rooms devoted to artists in the gallery program, on the occasion of In the sky I am one and many and as a human I am everything and nothing, Maiolino’s first solo exhibition in a Swiss institution at the Kunsthaus Baselland, on view from June 11 through September 26, 2021, as well as her participation in the long-term collection display senzamargine. Passages in Italian Art at the Turn of the Millennium at MAXXI in Rome, on view through October 10, 2021. 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.
Installation view at Kunsthaus Baselland, 2021
Photo: Gina Folly
Curated by Ines Goldbach, Maiolino’s exhibition at Kunstaus Baselland features a selection of her early videos, films, photographs, sculptures, drawings, and texts, spanning a narrative arc through her artistic work and life from the 1970s to the present.
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Maiolino's Corpo/Paisagem (Body/Landscape) photographic series from 2018 marks a shift from a fiercely political use of the body to an intimate, quiet one: the artist’s facial features become a landscape, and every detail a geographic element to explore.
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Photo in b/w, digital print
60 × 90 cm
Maiolino has employed clay in her sculptural practice since 1989. In an conversation with Helena Tatay the artist noted the generative potential of this material:
When we lay our hands on that wet mass of clay, a whole cosmic vision appears with all the archetypes of creation. Clay is the perfect prototype of matter, and it contains the possibility of form and invites us to look for it.
– Anna Maria Maiolino, in Anna Maria Maiolino, ed. Helena Tatay, exhibition catalogue, Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona, October 2010 – January 2011, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela, February –May 2011, Malmö Konsthall, May –August 2011, p. 54.
The 2014 sculpture Na Horizontal (On the Horizontal) is comprised of a multitude of vertical raku ceramic elements hanging from a metal structure. To create the molds that cast these organic shapes, Maiolino works the unfired clay by hand, kneading, rolling, stretching, and cutting it.
Metal structure with raku ceramic and shielded copper wire
240 × 120 × 20 cm
B/W photograph, digital print
31 × 46 cm image size
Ed. of 5 + 1 AP
To realize the drawings from her Codificaçoes Matéricas series, Maiolino pours acrylic ink over the sheet of paper and spreads it across the surface by tilting, rotating, and moving the sheet. Speaking about this process, Maiolino has said:
I work with the action, conscious of the material interrelations in a force field: my drives, the paper’s and ink’s properties and the force of gravity. In these drawings the ink poured over the sheet of paper is the transforming agent of the material. The ink flows, is etched, traced, condensed in contact with the air on its routes, in the stopping and restarting. The drop falls onto the surface of the paper, attracted by the force of gravity while I hold it between my hands. The way a ship’s captain grasps the helm, I move them firmly in the air, and with a careful eye capture and incorporate chance. A system is thereby established – simple and primordial.
7 color photographs, digital print
29,5 × 23,5 cm; 29,5 × 24,6 cm framed each
110 × 79 cm
Ed. of 5 + 1 AP
B/w photograph, digital print
35,5 × 30 cm; 41 × 35 cm framed
Ed. of 5 + 2 AP
Installation view at MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, 2020
Several works by Anna Maria Maiolino are currently on view at MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo in Rome as part of the long-term collection display senzamargine. Passages in Italian Art at the Turn of the Millennium, curated by Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, through October 10, 2021. The exhibition includes sculptures and works on paper, closely tied to gesture and the body, which together compose Maiolino’s unmistakable language.
Acrylic ink on paper (25 drawings)
29,5 × 21 cm; 34,6 × 25,5 cm framed each
Acrylic ink on paper
71,5 × 44,5 cm; 78 × 51 × 3,5 cm framed
Acrylic ink on paper
45,5 × 30,5 cm; 51,8 × 36,9 × 3,5 cm framed
Acrylic ink on paper
45,5 × 30,5 cm; 51,8 × 36,7 × 3,5 cm framed
Acrylic ink on paper
100 × 70 cm; 107 × 76,8 × 4 cm framed
B/w photograph, digital print
75 × 48 cm
Anna Maria Maiolino started her celebrated and wide-ranging photographic series Fotopoemação (Photo-poem-action) in 1973. In an e-mail sent to Michael Asbury in 2009 the artist has said:
The Photopoemaction series from the 1970s, like X and Little by Little…, is comprised of images. The reflection of emotions that sustain themselves in resisting. I use my own body not as a metaphor but as a truth, something that belongs to the realm of the real, since, at a time of repression and torture such as the dictatorship, all bodies become one in pain. A society without freedom is a mutilated society which cannot reach its maximum potential.
– Anna Maria Maiolino, in Anna’s Skin: Anna Maria Maiolino, ed. Daniel Lins, São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2016, p.219
The wall-mounted sculpture 7 + 1, serie Objeto Escultórico (from Sculptural Object series) evokes language and, more specifically, the written word. The simple shapes of the molded metal elements read as if they were punctuation written on a blank sheet of paper.
Molded cement with pigment
26 × 22 × 8 cm
Molded plaster with pigment
26,5 × 21,4 × 8 cm
Employing techniques of modeling, molding, and casting, Maiolino engages a dialogue of opposites: the positive, the negative. In the Pequenos Ausentes series of sculptures the little hole in the middle of the pieces (the imprint of the artist’s finger) contributes to reveal the vital character and power of the artist’s gesture.
Molded cement with pigment
25 × 21 × 8 cm
Molded plaster with pigment
25 × 21 × 8 cm
In the video work Sotto Voce, 2016, the artist reads a poem in Portuguese while the words of its English translation ascend from the bottom of the screen. Questions of belonging and migration are woven together with references to Maiolino’s own upbringing and the female condition, central themes of the artist’s practice. The title of the exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland, In the sky I am one and many and as a human I am everything and nothing, is taken from this very text.
At the start of 2021, while replying to a wonderful letter from Paulo Miyada, I realized that letters between friends and artists could represent a strong means of expressing our feelings, forming a kind of art. Thus, together with Paulo, we kickstarted this publication in Portuguese and English. It features correspondence, letters, other texts and productions created in dialogue between two or more people in the field of visual arts, primarily in Brazil, but we are also open to submissions from abroad. The word PRESENTE refers to now, the subject matter of the content, but it is also a synonym for a gift and, as such, the digital format of the magazine can be accessed free of charge.
– Anna Maria Maiolino in conversation with Ines Goldbach, 2021. Click here to read the full interview.