For more than six decades, Anna Maria Maiolino (1942) has incorporated a wide range of media — drawing, sculpture, printmaking, video, installation, performance, and poetry — in a constant search for new forms of expression. Body, language, desire, and subjectivity are treated as territories of experimentation, where the personal merges with the political and the intimate opens onto the collective.
In 2024, Maiolino received the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for lifetime achievement. Across solo and group exhibitions, her work has been shown at institutions such as MoMA, Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brooklyn Museum, Hammer Museum, MASP, Guggenheim Bilbao, MAM Rio, MAM SP, Tate Modern, Musée Picasso Paris, and Whitechapel Gallery. She participated in the 60th Venice Biennale, Foreigners Everywhere (2024); 20th Triennale di Milano: Art & Food. Rituals since 1851 (2015); 10th Gwangju Biennale (2014); 30th Bienal, Fundação Bienal de São Paulo (2013); documenta 13: Here & There, Kassel (2012), among others.
Untitled (2019) is a ceramic work about which the artist says:
“I do not consider myself an authentic ceramist, endowed with great technique in the art of ceramics, especially with regard to the important Chinese ceramic tradition. I am a curious artist who always seeks to approach and experiment with different techniques of art made by hand.
The memory of the cultures of the various countries in which I have lived has been of great significance to me. In the last ten years, I have produced several works using ceramic processes, finishing them with Raku, a simple technique that gives the surfaces of the pieces beautiful hues resulting from the smoke of the fire.
Clay is one of the oldest materials. Since the beginning of time, humanity has learned to work with it, creating utensils for preparing food. It also came to be used as a remedy for curing bodily ailments. This knowledge contributed to the development of rites and myths from the earliest times in different cultures around the world. These properties seduced me and gave rise to the Terra Modelada Series.”