Anna Maria Maiolino

Anna Maria Maiolino plaids in her work her humanistic upbringing with the lessons of the Brazilian neo-concrete movement that understood the work of art “not as a machine or an object, but as a quasi-body, an organic being”. Through a variety of media—drawing, sculpture, performance, installation, film and photography—Maiolino’s free and creative relationship to materials seeks out new modes of expression re-discovering tenuous links to ancestral practices. Reflecting a relational subjectivity, her work moves between dichotomies—in/out, positive/negative, void/full—that are constantly reconnecting in a process of transformation. The book opens with an interview with the artist by Helena Tatay. That is the narrative thread that ties together over a hundred images of her artistic practice from 1967 till today, including a facsimile of one of her book-objects, in fact an artist book within the catalogue. Writings by Griselda Pollock and Marcio Doctors, renewing the artist’s work provide a broad context for the understanding of Maiolino’s work, as the contribution from Ivone Margulies on the analysis of Anna Maria Maiolino’s films. Beeinflusst von der neo-konkreten Kunst Brasiliens sieht Anna Maria Maiolino Kunst nicht als etwas Festes, Unveränderbares an, sondern als etwas Lebendiges, das sich formen lässt und einem ständigen Wandel unterzogen ist. In ihrer ersten Monografie dominiert das Spiel mit Gegensätzen. Umwandlungen, Transformationen, Bewegungen durchziehen ihre Arbeiten. Im Zusammenspiel von Zeichnungen, Skulpturen, Performances, Installationen, Filme und Fotografien werden Wandlungsprozesse offen gelegt und – oft auf überraschende Weise – sichtbar gemacht.