In the Studio: This Must Be the Place – Anna Maria Maiolino

Anna Maria Maiolino, a Brazilian multimedia artist, will be in conversation with Carla Stellweg, art historian.

Join us live on Instagram from your phone, or watch on YouTube after, for a series of conversations with some of the artists of This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975 to bring Americas Society's Visual Arts public programs to your home. Every other Wednesday this month, artists will dialogue with our guest host Carla Stellweg to talk about their work and practice.

About the artist

Anna Maria Maiolino (b. Scalea, Italy, 1942) is one of the most significant artists working in Brazil today. Maiolino lived in New York from 1968 to 1971, where she worked as a textile designer and studied at the Pratt Institute. She moved to the city with her then husband (artist Rubens Gerchman) and children to escape the dictatorship in Brazil. In New York, she continued a series of drawings titled Entre pausas (Between pauses) that trace her experiences in the new city and made prints reflecting her desire to leave the United States. Maiolino’s practice expresses a concern with creative and destructive processes. She has produced works that opposed Brazil’s national military regime, rising urban inequalities, and culturally ingrained patriarchy. Since the 1980s, she has primarily worked with malleable materials, such as clay, to make labor-intensive sculptures and installations that reference daily rituals and experiences. She also draws and paints, working across a wide range of disciplines and mediums, relentlessly exploring notions of subjectivity and self. Maiolino has exhibited widely in Brazil and around the world, and her work belongs in the collections of Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou, the Museo Reina Sofía, and the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, among other institutions. 

About the guest speaker

Carla Stellweg is an independent consultant specializing in Latin American and Latinx art and artists. Throughout her career, she has worked as a museum and non-profit director, writer, editor, curator, and professor. Carla is considered a pioneer promoter and facilitator in Latin American international contemporary art. She was and continues to be instrumental in introducing many young and mid-career artists from Latin America, Latinx-U.S., Cuba and the Caribbean producing conceptual, socially-engaged art in both new and traditional media, either working in New York or from around the world.Along with the collectives Museo Latinoamericano and MICLA, many of which are exhibited in This Must Be the Place she created the artist book Contrabienal in 1971 in response to an international call to boycott the XI São Paulo Biennial in protest of the censorship and torture in dictatorial Brazil.

Visit the Americas Society Visual Arts YouTube Channel for recordings of In the Studio Series and other previous events.

Follow the conversation on Instagram: #IntheStudioAS | @americassociety.visualarts

Image is copyrighted by Anna Maria Maiolino. Its use is courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth

More digital content from Visual Arts at Americas Society:

• Check out the current exhibition This Must Be the Place: Latin American Artists in New York, 1965–1975 and read the exhibition catalogue.
• Check out the current iteration of our Flag Series: Felipe Mujica — Estrella Distante.
• Read about the previous exhibition Terence Gower: The Good Neighbour.
• Read the exhibition catalogue for Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music.
• Watch videos of recent events:
  • Terence Gower: The Good Neighbor
  • Terence Gower and Mexican Modernism
  • Reflections on Joaquín Orellana's Marimba Imaginaria
  • In Discussion: Presenting Biennial FEMSA XIV
  • Art at a Distance: Promoting Visual Arts during the Health Crisis