// Workers AI · dad joke modeIs Maria Thereza Alves a baker? She kneads recognition.
Maria Thereza Alves | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 64–65) |
| Education | Cooper Union |
| Occupations | Installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, writer |
| Known for | Seeds of Change (1999–now) |
| Movement | Conceptual art |
| Partner | Jimmie Durham (?–2021; his death) |
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
[edit]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
[edit]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]
Her former partner was artist Jimmie Durham, who died in 2021.[13]
Publications
[edit]- 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
[edit]- ↑ 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.
- 1 2 Yawitz, Adela (2018-06-18). "Curators Test Ties Between Science, Art, and The Colonial Imagination". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- 1 2 3 4 5 "Intra-Disciplinary Seminar Public Lecture: Maria Thereza Alves A'85". The Cooper Union. Retrieved 2023-06-11.
- ↑ "Maria Thereza Alves - 32nd Bienal". 32nd Bienal São Paulo. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- 1 2 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.
- ↑ "Maria Thereza Alves, Seeds of Change: New York—A Botany of Colonization". Vera List Center, The New School. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- 1 2 3 Aima, Rahel. "Rahel Aima on Maria Thereza Alves's Seeds of Change". Artforum. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- 1 2 Meier, Allison (2017-11-15). "How the Invasive Plants of New York Represent the City's Colonial Past". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- ↑ Moffitt, Evan (2018-08-16). "How Nature and Art Reveal the Illogic of Borders". Frieze. No. 197. ISSN 0962-0672. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ "Biennale Of Sydney Announces 2020 Exhibition: Nirin". Biennale of Sydney. 9 April 2019. Archived from the original on 2023-06-12.
- ↑ "Oltre Triumphs and Laments, sul Tevere arriva Witnesses - Arte". Agenzia ANSA (in Italian). 2021-10-08. Retrieved 2023-06-12.
- ↑ Finkel, Jori (November 17, 2021). "Jimmie Durham, Sculptor Who Explored Indigenous Themes, Dies at 81". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-03-31.
In 1987, he moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, with his companion, Maria Thereza Alves, an activist-artist from Brazil, before decamping for Europe. She is his only survivor.
