Anna Maria Maiolino: Cioè

Drawing inspiration from the women’s everyday imagination and the experience of an oppressive and censorious dictatorship – as was in Brazil in the 70s and 80s –Anna Maria Maiolino (b.1942, Scalea) creates works permeated by a vital energy along her route, embracing different languages and media: performance, sculpture, video, photography and drawing.

Cioè features new works recently produced by the artist, who chooses a discursive conjunction as the title of the exhibition to represent her wish to intrigue the audience without ever making her intentions explicit. Only the direct experience of the work, through the variety of an alphabet of signs, will reveal answers and meanings to the public. According to Maiolino, the concept of process is inherent in the idea of sculpture: the artist is interested in what happens before the
work is completed and searches for a formal solution that can be witness of the creative action.
The works on show involve different media. Some sculptures from the Cobrinhas series in raku ceramic and from the Entre o Dentro e o Fora series reflect on the contrast between solid and void, on the absence or presence of matter: also the titles of the works allude to these themes. The drawings are made with different techniques: in the Interações and Hierárquicos the ink, moved by the force of gravity and the random gesture of the artist, slides on the paper and becomes the transforming agent of the surface; the Filogenéticos, brush-painted, remind of cellular organisms in constant metamorphosis; the Pré-indefinidos and De Volta, present a more traditional use of the vocabulary of drawing. On show also two videos: João & Maria [Hansel and Gretel], 2009/2015, a recent production, and a historical video from the 70s lately re-edited, Um dia [One Day], 1976/2015.

For Anna Maria Maiolino, the opening of the exhibition will be the special occasion to present a new action titled in ATTO, several years after her latest performance, with artist Sandra Lessa as special guest.
The performance springs and advances thanks to the relationship between the two women, the one young and the other older. Sandra evokes a corporeal soundscape, where much is left to improvisation. Anna, the older woman, is close to her, attentive and caring: her presence serves metaphorically as a teacher and induces the young woman to her return to life.