Maria Thereza Alves

Maria Thereza Alves
Born1961 (age 62–63)
São Paulo, Brazil
EducationCooper Union
Occupation(s)Installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, writer
Known forSeeds of Change (1999–now)
MovementConceptual art

Maria Thereza Alves (born 1961) is a Brazilian-born American and German installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, and writer.[1][2] She lives in Berlin.[3][4]

Early life and education

Maria Thereza Alves was born in São Paulo in 1961. When she was a child, her family moved to New York City to escape the dictatorship in Brazil. She attended Cooper Union, and graduated in architecture (BFA 1985).[3]

Career

In 1978, Alves presented at the United Nations Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva on the indigenous population human rights abuses in Brazil.[3][5] She is a co-founder of the Partido Verde (or Green Party) of São Paulo in 1987.[3][5]

Her long-term art project Seeds of Change studies colonialism, slavery, migration, and the global commerce.[6][7] The series was started in 1999 and focuses on displaced plant seeds used to balance shipping vessels during the colonial period.[8] It has been held in port cities such as Marseille, Reposaari, Liverpool, Exeter–Topsham, Dunkirk, Bristol, New York City, and Antwerp.[7][9][8]

In 2016, she won the biennial Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.[7][10] Her work was part of the group exhibition "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest" (2018) at Charité medical university.[2] Alves has participated in Documenta (13), Manifesta 12, Sharjah Biennal in 2017, and the Biennale of Sydney in 2020.[3][11] In 2021, Alves with the mural "Witnesses" was chosen by Associazione Tevereterno Onlus and Fondazione Quadriennale to replace William Kentridge’s mural on the same spot on the Tiber in Rome.[12]

Publications

  • de Llano, Pedro, ed. (2018). Maria Thereza Alves: The Long Road to Xico / El largo camino a Xico, 1991–2015. Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-8499592381.

References

  1. ^ Checa-Gismero, Paloma (September 2017). "Realism in the Work of Maria Thereza Alves". Afterall: A Journal of Art, Context and Enquiry. 44: 52–63. doi:10.1086/695513. ISSN 1465-4253.
  2. ^ a b Yawitz, Adela (2018-06-18). "Curators Test Ties Between Science, Art, and The Colonial Imagination". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  3. ^ a b c d e "Intra-Disciplinary Seminar Public Lecture: Maria Thereza Alves A'85". The Cooper Union. Retrieved 2023-06-11.
  4. ^ "Maria Thereza Alves - 32nd Bienal". 32nd Bienal São Paulo. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  5. ^ a b Aloi, Giovanni; Marder, Michael (2023-07-04). Vegetal Entwinements in Philosophy and Art: A Reader. MIT Press. p. 404. ISBN 978-0-262-04779-1.
  6. ^ "Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York—A Botany of Colonization". Vera List Center, The New School. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  7. ^ a b c Aima, Rahel. "Rahel Aima on Maria Thereza Alves's Seeds of Change". Artforum. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  8. ^ a b Meier, Allison (2017-11-15). "How the Invasive Plants of New York Represent the City's Colonial Past". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  9. ^ Moffitt, Evan (2018-08-16). "How Nature and Art Reveal the Illogic of Borders". Frieze. No. 197. ISSN 0962-0672. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  10. ^ Morgan, Tiernan; Politics, Vera List Center for Art and (2017-10-31). "Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics Conference 2016–2018". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
  11. ^ "Biennale Of Sydney Announces 2020 Exhibition: Nirin". Biennale of Sydney. 9 April 2019. Archived from the original on 2023-06-12.
  12. ^ "Oltre Triumphs and Laments, sul Tevere arriva Witnesses - Arte". Agenzia ANSA (in Italian). 2021-10-08. Retrieved 2023-06-12.