Rego and Varejão: transatlantic affinities

Although they belong to different continents and generations, and their works are radically different in form, there seems to be, between Portuguese Paula Rego (1935-2022) and Brazilian Adriana Varejão (b.1964), a set of thematic affinities that justify an exhibition like Between Your Teeth, on display since April 11 at Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s CAM.

The first exhibition dialogue between the artists took place during Paula Rego’s lifetime, in 2017, at Carpintaria, a space dedicated to experimentalism and artistic avant-garde in Rio de Janeiro, in what was (surprisingly) the Portuguese artist’s only exhibition in that city. As Adriana Varejão herself acknowledges, during the press visit to the current exhibition, “my work has a very close relationship with Paula’s”. The artist adds that, “we often look to themes from History or the fictional universe to uncover the most apparent layers and unearth what is most hidden in the narratives used by patriarchal society.”

With subtleness, the title of the exhibition can be understood as a summary of the artistic discourse of both. To highlight the feminism that unites them and the exploration of social themes, namely gender violence or “the subjugation of lands and bodies that is at the basis of colonization” (note in Paula Rego’s work, the rarely exhibited painting A primeira missa no Brasil, where the artist evokes the 19th-century painting by Victor Meirelles “which depicts the Tupi people attending a Catholic mass”), a verse from Poemas aos homens do nosso tempo, written in the 1970s by the Brazilian poet and novelist Hilda Hilst, was used. In it, one senses “the raw nature of this encounter between two prominent artists of our time”, as highlighted by curator Helena de Freitas, who also adds a very strong and artistically relevant point of affinity: “both grew up in dictatorships based on societies marked by patriarchal rigidity and Catholicism.”

Between Your Teeth thus refers to the way in which Rego and Varejão’s art approaches the representation of “literal and metaphorical” bodies, reflecting “how patriarchy, colonialism and all forms of oppression feed off each other, chewing up people and their stories.”

Domestic space in the museum

Bringing together around 80 works, including a previously unseen one by Adriana Varejão, curators Helena de Freitas, Victor Gorgulho and the Brazilian artist herself, propose in Between Your Teeth what they define as “an immersive dramaturgy”. The works are arranged in 13 themed rooms, designed by Daniela Thomas, “in which each space, imbued with a domestic atmosphere, reveals new dimensions of the psychological depth and imaginative power of the artists.”

The relationship between the works in this “dramaturgical” device allows us to highlight the powerful dialogue between the private (the domestic world) and the public in which Rego and Varejão’s works are situated. Take, for example, the room entitled “Cleansing Rituals”, where a set of black and white engravings and lithographs on the theme of abortion, created by the Portuguese artist in the aftermath of the 1998 referendum that blocked the legalization of voluntary termination of pregnancy in Portugal, coexist with the engravings and paintings from Varejão’s “Sauna” series. In them, the Brazilian artist confronts us with spaces that are apparently uninhabited and aseptic, but “impregnated with impurities”, such as bodily fluids and human waste, namely blood and hair. The dialogue between the works of the two artists in this space is a good demonstration of the success of the curatorial option that governs the exhibition.

If Paula Rego needs no introduction, for those less familiar, Adriana Varejão is one of the most important Brazilian artists of today, with her work present in the collections of the largest institutions in the world, such as Tate Modern, in London, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. In Lisbon, the artist from Rio de Janeiro held two major solo exhibitions: the first, in 1998, at Pavilhão Branco of the then-called Museu da Cidade; the second, at Centro Cultural de Belém, in 2005. In Portugal, her works are part of the collections of Berardo Collection – MAC/CCB and Serralves Foundation, in Porto.

Between Your Teeth is on display in the CAM Nave until the end of the summer, and can be visited daily, except on Tuesdays.