Adriana Varejao Analysis

Adriana Varejao is a Brazilian Artist born in 1964, she works and lives in Rio de Janeiro. Her work includes paintings, drawings,sculpture, installations and photography. Her work is represented by the Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York City and has been included in numerous collections worldwide. Some of the collections are the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
In the mid 1990s the artist explored contrasting two different elements, flesh and tiles, The Jerked-beef ruin series from 200-2004.

Vaejao's paintings brings to mind situations of a butcher shop, a bar, a kitchen, a bathroom or a hospital; social space, domestic space and intimate space, space in which the body must be protected just as tiles protect a wall which defines the structure of a building. Protection suggests keeping under cover but Varejao suggests that it is impossible to hide the body. The large mass of meat overflows the limits of the painted canvas. Upon the canvas Vaejao paints the tiles taking precise application,spilling from the cracks emerges a monstrous sandwich of meat. The way the canvas has been applied with paint suggests the illusion of insides and organs.

This series of work inspired me because I like the way she combined two things that would not usually be together in this format. The way she's depicted the look of the meat inspired me to experiment with this idea of flesh or meat. When I first saw the work I didn't quite know what to make of it, it interested me in the terms of combining two elements thats are not fit to work with each other but on the other hand it made me feel on the edge because it looks so realistic. It reminds me of the film Silent Hill when the walls start to peel away to expose the dark side of the town. The idea of peeling away to expose what is underneath is a factor that I would like to take forward.