Brazilian contemporary artist, Adriana Varejão, utilizes her creative energy towards creating art that evokes the audience to question the coexistence of history and sacrifice. Varejão believes in the importance of creating art that, “…develop a language that makes sense inside of it. My work always deal with history in general, but history from the edges, marginal cultures.” (Crane.tv). The series of paintings entitled, “Tongues and incisions’” uses the exposure of raw flesh (oil on canvas and polyurethane on aluminum and wood support) to carry the heavy contrast between “rational, geometrical, cold” and “the presence of the body, history written in the body”. Such two descriptions carries the artist’s fascination with Portugal’s colonization
…show more content…
Self portraits were made from oil on canvas, each of the same post and expression with only the shades of the skin as the only altered factor through the series. The paintings also incorporated a color palate of the scheme of hues used to create the different toned skin of the artist. Sun tanned orange shades to cool bark colors to the frosty peach pink were all various colors the author tried to explore. Along with the presentation of paintings, the usage of mixed medium was involved. Varejão self selected and then crafted “thirty-three” hues of skin tones of oil paints based on a 1976 survey conducted by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). The poll’s goal was to push past the five colors: white, black, red, yellow, brown that Brazilian government offered to the the general public of Brazil. By imposing the question “What is your colour?”, the 135 personal color identity surpassed the five colors given by the census. The tubes of custom oil paint were designed by Varejão from the detailing of the cap to the way it was laid within an enclosed glass box on a wooden board. The exhibition set-up was simple and consistent from the layout of the paintings evenly spaced and laid side by side in a horizontal manner. “Polvo: mixed media”, the oil tubes, were set up on a podium in the center of the room so the viewers had a sense of relations between the painting the case displayed work. The title “Polvo” translates to Octopus, as to why the artist choose the eight legged organic sea creature correlates much closely to the topic of skin tone. Melanin, the polymer that makes color on the skin and the hair on the human body possible, is present in the ink that octopuses jets out as an act of
Self portraits were made from oil on canvas, each of the same post and expression with only the shades of the skin as the only altered factor through the series. The paintings also incorporated a color palate of the scheme of hues used to create the different toned skin of the artist. Sun tanned orange shades to cool bark colors to the frosty peach pink were all various colors the author tried to explore. Along with the presentation of paintings, the usage of mixed medium was involved. Varejão self selected and then crafted “thirty-three” hues of skin tones of oil paints based on a 1976 survey conducted by the IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics). The poll’s goal was to push past the five colors: white, black, red, yellow, brown that Brazilian government offered to the the general public of Brazil. By imposing the question “What is your colour?”, the 135 personal color identity surpassed the five colors given by the census. The tubes of custom oil paint were designed by Varejão from the detailing of the cap to the way it was laid within an enclosed glass box on a wooden board. The exhibition set-up was simple and consistent from the layout of the paintings evenly spaced and laid side by side in a horizontal manner. “Polvo: mixed media”, the oil tubes, were set up on a podium in the center of the room so the viewers had a sense of relations between the painting the case displayed work. The title “Polvo” translates to Octopus, as to why the artist choose the eight legged organic sea creature correlates much closely to the topic of skin tone. Melanin, the polymer that makes color on the skin and the hair on the human body possible, is present in the ink that octopuses jets out as an act of