The Hispanic Society Museum & Library (HSM&L) is pleased to present Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics, an exhibition of new paintings and sculpture by leading Brazilian artist Adriana Varejão. The show features new paintings from Varejão’s acclaimed Plate series and a site-specific outdoor sculptural intervention.
The new works reflect on the Amazonian rainforest as a vital nexus of ecology, art, and culture. Stemming from Varejão’s participation in the inaugural Bienal das Amazônias (2023), they also mark two decades since the artist began conducting research with the Yanomami people in the Amazon basin. The exhibition debuts the latest additions to Varejão’s celebrated Plate series, inspired by historic Palissy ceramics. These large-scale fiberglass tondos boast protruding three-dimensional elements which are hand-sculpted and painted in oil. The front of each plate is adorned with exuberant imagery of Amazonian flora and fauna, while the reverse evokes designs from historic ceramics from the HSM&L’s collection and beyond, including Spanish Valenciana, Ottoman Iznik, Ming Dynasty Hongzhi porcelain, and pre-Columbian Amazonian Marajoara pottery.
In front of the museum, Varejão activates the institution’s 1927 equestrian statue of El Cid by Anna Hyatt Huntington with a monumental sculptural intervention. In this new site-specific work, a vibrantly painted fiberglass sucuri (Amazonian anaconda) coils around the bronze warrior, confronting the statue’s symbolism of imperialism, masculinity, and man’s domination of nature.
In addition to producing new works, Varejão has curated a selection of historic ceramic plates from the HSM&L’s collection to display alongside her Plate series. By placing these ceramics in conversation with her monumental paintings, she raises provocative questions about the hierarchies of aesthetics. Historically, ceramics have been relegated to “craft” or “decorative arts,” secondary to painting and sculpture. Varejão challenges these assumptions, creating sculptural paintings inspired by ceramics from the past. Her works blur these boundaries, demonstrating how ceramics, with their evolutive essence and origins in every culture, can engage with contemporary issues and enrich our understanding of art.
The exhibition’s title, Don’t Forget, We Come From the Tropics, is both a tribute to the natural and cultural vitality of Brazil and an homage to one of its distinguished artists, Maria Martins, who famously declared, “Don’t forget, I come from the Tropics.” This embrace of tropical and Baroque aesthetics celebrates the vibrancy of the Latin American world.
Organized in collaboration with Gagosian, the exhibition exemplifies the HSM&L’s commitment to fostering meaningful dialogues between historical and contemporary art.
