Sometimes with an artist you just get a feel – you know their work feels right – even when there’s stuff you don’t like you somehow feel that, deep down, you’re on the same wavelength.
I loved this exhibition, the first major exhibition in the UK to present a survey of Brazilian artist Anna Maria Maiolino, who was born in 1942 and so is nearly 80 years old. Here’s the Whitechapel’s promo video:
Born in Calabria Italy during the war, young Anna Maria emigrated with her family to Venezuela in 1954 and then onto Brazil in 1960 and it was here that she completed the art studies she had begun in Caracas. In 1963 she married the artist Rubens Gerchman and the following year the military seized power in Brazil, imposing a repressive, fiercely conservative regime which lasted twenty years.
The Whitechapel’s main gallery space is spread across two floors, and they made the decision to put Maiolino’s big and impactful, more recent works on the ground floor and the older, earlier stuff up on the first floor: but I’m going to reverse the order.
Upstairs: Politics, woodcuts and paper
She and Gerchman were, of course, part of the artistic resistance to the regime. The earliest works are woodcuts deliberately made in a popular accessible style and drawing on the wood engraving tradition of north-east Brazil. I liked the good humour in these immediately.
ANNA by Anna Maria Maiolino (1967) Photo by Vicente de Mello
They describe universal experiences – birth, eating, talking – in this simple, woodcut style but still imbued with a combination of teasing humour but also something quite profound.
In 1968 the couple moved to New York and Maiolino, though much of her time was spent bringing up their two children, found time to make a whole series of deliberately primitive drawings, verging on cartoons, which I really liked.
Untitled from the series Between Pauses by Anna Maria Maiolino (1968 to 1969) Courtesy collection of Lisa and Tom Blumenthal
There is a big section about her experiments with paper in the 1970s, experimenting with its use as a sculptural material in all kinds of ways, cutting, folding, tearing and burning paper to animate both sides. She created series with multiple levels of paper, the top level with holes or shapes or patterns cut out.
There are a number of these paper cutout maps, sometimes with scorched edges. One of the best was a big big black sheet of cartridge paper in which she had cut out the silhouette of Brazil to reveal another sheet of black cartridge paper a few inches further down.
Black Soul of Latin America (1973 to 1996) from the series Mental Maps by Anna Maria Maiolino
Photos
Then there’s a room devoted to her photos. Without exception they are black and white art photos and they are all brilliant – funny deadpan, surreal. There are ones of her in simple art poses, pretending to cut off her nose with scissors, a classic image of her, her mother and her daughter facing the camera and linked by a loop of string from their mouths.
By a thread from the series Photopoemaction (1976) by Anna Maria Maiolino, photo by Regina Vater
There is a brilliant series of photos with eggs – a rough male hand holding a white egg, an egg in a scrunched up newspaper, an egg nestled between someone’s thighs, a number of eggs carefully placed across a mattress, and a brilliant triptych of white eggs placed on a cobbled pavement and someone walking carefully between them bare-legged.
Between Lives from the series Photopoemaction (1981/2010) by Anna Maria Maiolino, photo by Henri Virgil Stahl
Frankly, they could have had a room or two of just her photos and I’d have paid to see them.
Downstairs: clay, sculpture, prints
Downstairs is the main gallery space, the one you walk into when you first enter, one big space in which the curators have very tastefully and effectively arranged series of more recent works made by Maiolino in clay, sculpture, drawing and indicios.
Clay
The most striking genre or type of work are the big coils of clay sausages. Remember making long sausages or snakes out of plasticine as a kid? Maiolino used her hands to turn nearly one ton of red clay into a huge heap of intertwining sausage shapes specially for this exhibition. The idea is that the loops will dry out, turn to dust and eventually return to the earth, in line with a long-standing interest she has in eating and excreting.
Anna Maria Maiolino with her unfired clay sculptures Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary at Whitechapel Gallery. Press Association
Sculpture
Rolling on from the clay sausage snakes, is a series of fired clay works which stick clay shapes – such as a load of bonbon shapes or curves or sections of tube – onto square clay bases and then hanging these on the wall. It was about this point when I realised that I just like her stuff. Whether it’s woodcuts or experiments with paper or wonderful photos or fun with clay – something deep down connects with everything she’s done. It all seems just fine.
From the series Codicils by Anna Maria Maiolino. Photo by the author
Another series is of very distinctive cubs of clay which have been eaten away. The visitor assistant explained that slabs of clay are placed within cube-shaped metal containers and then Maiolino uses water to eat away at them, lets them dry, then removes the metal frames to reveal strange underwater grotto shapes.
Installation view of Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary at Whitechapel Gallery. Photo by the author
Drawings
Upstairs we saw how Maiolino produced numerous drawings start with her stint in New York in the late 1960s, then evolving to all kinds of experiments with cutting, folding, piercing and tying together paper.
Continuing her experiments with paper, downstairs there are quite a few abstract works made by simple actions and chance. She drops the ink onto a blank sheet and then moves the sheet around to make the ink roll and curve, forming all kinds of shapes.
Untitled from the series Phylogenetics (2015) Anna by Maria Maiolino, photo by Everton Ballardin
Many of these are standalone works, which are all appealing in their way, but the most impressive thing is where they’ve assembled 30 or so of them into a huge wall of abstract shapes – you can see it in the background of this general view, a series titled Drop Marks, suggesting an alphabet but one that is too large, abstract and interrupted…
Installation view of Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary at Whitechapel Gallery
Indicios
Another way of experimenting with paper is to stitch onto it. Maiolino created a series titled Indicios by stitching through paper and drawing a line through the stitch pints, and filling the resulting ‘drawings’ with lines crosses and webs. What is interesting about these is the gaps between the stitches – they all look unfinished and suggestive of something, as if memory is straining to join the dots and complete the image of a picture which isn’t quite there.
Installation view of Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary at Whitechapel Gallery showing Indicios
This is a lovely, peaceful, beautifully laid out exhibition full of lots of beautiful, humorous and inventive wonders.
Related links
- Anna Maria Maiolino: Making Love Revolutionary continues at the Whitechapel gallery until 12 January 2019
Books & Boots 