november 14, 2016 - Gagosian Gallery

Gagosian Gallery, Adriana Varejão - Transbarroco. The exhibition is extended until January 14, 2017

One of Brazil's most renowned living artists, Adriana Varejão is perhaps best known for her incisive reflections on the rich yet conflicted history and culture of her country, embodied in the Azulejão or “big tile” paintings, ongoing since the first iteration in 1988. Transbarroco (2014) is Varejão's only multi-channel video installation to date. This dynamic work, which traces key influences on Varejão's oeuvre in sweeping takes of the dizzying interiors of local Baroque churches, and an accompanying sound collage, is being presented in Italy for the first time.
Described by Varejão as “jewels of the mestizo Brazilian Baroque,” the four churches that appear in the film are among the most significant examples of local religious architecture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the Church of San Francisco in Salvador, Bahia; the Third Order of Saint Francis in Rio de Janeiro; the Church of St Francis of Assisi in Ouro Preto, and the Cathedral of Mariana in Mariana, Minas Gerais. Transbarroco unfolds across four screens, in scenes entitled Gold, The Blue, Sky and Earth, and China. Panning horizontally and vertically, the camera captures the varied figures, surfaces, and contrasting elements that appear in the church interiors.
The soundscape that underscores the video installation is a collage of text, voices, sounds, and contrasting rhythms. Within the mix that combines the drumming of the Bahia-based collective Olodum, the music of the Mariana Church organ, and ambient sounds captured during the filming—the voices of church guides, children playing, church bells, and fragments of samba music—the Angolan writer José Eduardo Agualusa reads an excerpt from Gilberto Freyre's Casa-Grande & Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves)—which addresses the influence of the vernacular language of endearment used by black nannies on the evolution of the Portuguese language in Brazil.
It reads: “The Negro nurse did very often with words what she did with food: she mashed them, removed the bones, took away their hardness, and left them as soft and pleasing syllables in the mouth of the white child. For this reason Portuguese as spoken in the north of Brazil, principally, is one of the most melodious forms of speech to be found anywhere in the world. Without double r's or double s's; the final syllables soft; the words all but chewed up in the mouth. The language of the Brazilian young, and the same is true of Portuguese children, has a flavour that is almost African: cacá (excrement); pipí (urine); bumbum (a buzz); tenten or tem- tem (the motions a child makes in learning to walk); nenem (a child);tatá (daddy); papá; papato (shoe); lili and mimi (personal pronouns); au-au (a dog); bambanho (bath); cocô (excrement); dindinho (godfather or grandfather); bimbinha (child's penis).”
For further inquiries please contact the gallery at +39.06.4208.6498 or at pressroma@gagosian.com. Image is subject to copyright. Gallery approval must be granted prior to reproduction.

Adriana Varejão
Transbarroco
Accademia di Francia a #roma – Villa Medici viale Trinità dei Monti, 1 00187 Rome www.villamedici.it
On view at Gagosian Rome:
Adriana Varejão
Azulejão
October 1–December 10, 2016 
Via Francesco Crispi 16 00187 Rome www.gagosian.com