Adriana Varejão and the biennial arc of her recent work
Published on 08/21/2026 at 12:48 | Editorial responsibility: Rafael Müller, Editor-in-Chief AD HOC NEWS
Adriana Varejão has, over the past two decades, developed a practice that links baroque surfaces with the violence of colonial history. Her large ceramic reliefs and painting-sculpture hybrids have moved from Rio de Janeiro studios into major museum and biennial contexts around the Atlantic world.
Biennials and fairs in recent years
Adriana Varejão’s trajectory toward the international biennial circuit has been gradual rather than sudden, with key institutional platforms marking the way. The Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York announced her exhibition Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics, running from March 27 to June 22, 2025, as her first solo museum show in the city, focusing on new works from her Plate series and a site-specific outdoor sculpture.Hispanic Society Museum & Library press release
The Lisbon-based Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian framed Varejão’s work within a dialogue show titled Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth, presented from April 11 to September 15, 2025, with almost one hundred works tracing shared themes of violence, memory and the politics of representation.e-flux exhibitions 2025 announcement
Positioning for Venice and beyond
The London gallery Victoria Miro has underlined how Varejão’s ceramic and pictorial strategies resonate with national representation at major biennials. The gallery notes that she and fellow Brazilian artist Rosana Paulino are slated to represent Brazil at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, in a pavilion presentation curated by Diane Lima under the title Comigo ninguém pode, confirming the continued relevance of her work for discussions of race, gender and colonial histories in a global context.Victoria Miro announcement on Brazil at Venice 2026
Parallel to this future pavilion, Victoria Miro has scheduled the exhibition Modernisms at its space in Venice for September 12 to October 31, 2026, conceived as a body of new paintings that respond directly to the Brazilian Pavilion project and extend Varejão’s engagement with modernist forms and their colonial underpinnings.
All news and background on Adriana Varejão
For further coverage of Adriana Varejão’s exhibitions, biennial projects and institutional collaborations, our archive gathers reporting from New York, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro and upcoming Venice presentations.
The work core in ceramics and painting
Varejão’s practice has long revolved around hybrid objects that sit between painting, sculpture and architecture. Her early tile-based works treated blue-and-white azulejos as a field for inserting bodies and histories, often splitting the wall to reveal painted flesh beneath the ceramic surface, a move that turns the ornamental façade into a site of historical trauma.
From this starting point she developed several connected work groups, including the visceral Mapa de Lombo canvases that treat the globe as butchered meat and the Saunas series, in which tiled bathhouse interiors become sites for mapping desire and power. The Pratos or Plate series expands this language into three dimensions, with large round forms that combine sculptural relief with painted references to baroque decoration, Catholic iconography and natural motifs drawn from the Amazonian rainforest.Hispanic Society exhibition overview
Where the artist stands now
Adriana Varejão maintains an established position as a leading Brazilian artist whose ceramic and pictorial investigations into colonial and postcolonial histories continue to be taken up by major museums and biennials, with her upcoming Brazilian Pavilion project at Venice poised to extend that arc.
Key facts on Adriana Varejão
- Artist: Adriana Varejão
- Medium / Genre: Painting and sculpture (installation, ceramic relief)
- Born: 1964, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Place(s) of practice: Studio in Rio de Janeiro
- Active since: Late 1980s, with early recognition in Brazilian institutional contexts in the 1990s
- Key work groups: Azulejo tile works, Saunas, Mapa de Lombo, Plate series
- Current/last exhibition: Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics, Hispanic Society Museum & Library, New York, March 27–June 22, 2025
- Major collections: Guggenheim (New York), Tate (London), Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Inhotim (Brumadinho)
- Awards: 9º Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas prize (1986), among other Brazilian distinctions
- Next date: Brazilian Pavilion, 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, 2026
Frequently asked questions about Adriana Varejão
Where has Adriana Varejão recently exhibited her work?
In 2025, Adriana Varejão presented the exhibition Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics at the Hispanic Society Museum & Library in New York and participated in Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão: Between Your Teeth at the Centro de Arte Moderna Gulbenkian in Lisbon.
How does Adriana Varejão’s work engage with colonial history?
Varejão uses materials such as azulejo tiles, ceramic plates and painted flesh to visualize the violence and hybridity produced by Portuguese colonialism, often exposing metaphorical wounds beneath decorative surfaces to address race, religion and power.
What role will Adriana Varejão play at the Venice Biennale?
According to gallery announcements, Adriana Varejão is slated to co-represent Brazil at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2026, in a pavilion curated by Diane Lima that focuses on contemporary perspectives on Brazilian histories and identities.
This article was produced with a.i. support and editorially reviewed. All statements without guarantee; auction results, exhibition dates and awards may change at short notice.
