Exhibitions
Dreaming Again: Rivane Neuenschwander's work at Itaú Cultural
Throughout her career of more than three decades, visual artist Rivane Neuenschwander has invited us—through lines, colors, words, and actions—to shake off apathy, renew our perspective on reality, and open ourselves to the charm of imagining possible worlds. Rooted in our experience, both individual and collective, fear and dreams emerge as driving forces to resist and confront the barbarities of everyday life.
Rivane Neuenschwander (Belo Horizonte, 1967) is a Brazilian visual artist internationally recognized for her unique approach to working with modest and ephemeral materials, such as flowers, water, feathers, and colored ribbons. Graduated from the Federal University of Minas Gerais and with postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art in London, she currently lives and works in São Paulo.
Her work explores concepts such as chance, control, temporality, and memory, often integrating natural or biological processes and encouraging active audience participation. In her installations, visitors are not mere observers, but collaborators who complete and transform the piece. Through this methodology, Neuenschwander connects the everyday with the poetic and the cultural with the social, establishing a dialogue between the local and the global, as well as between tradition and contemporaneity.
With that transformative spark, the exhibition " Brazil of Fear and Dream: A Panorama of Rivane Neuenschwander's Work" arrives at Itaú Cultural (IC). Curated by Pernambuco-born researcher and journalist Fabiana Moraes, the exhibition occupies all three floors of the institution's temporary exhibition area and brings together a variety of artistic media, including videos, sculptures, paintings, installations, and drawings.
The temporary exhibition will be open from August 14 to November 2 and offers a comprehensive overview of the artist's work. The exhibition brings together emblematic pieces from her career— such as Ash Wednesday/Epilogue (2006), Behind the Door (2007), and Suddenly (2016/2025)—along with works never before seen in Brazil and others created especially for this exhibition.
"It's an exhibition that articulates important moments in the artist's work and presents, through images, objects, and gestures, issues of post-pandemic and post-attempted institutional coup in Brazil. A flight that reminds us, with our pupils fully dilated, of the many scares that punctuate Brazil's political and social history," explains the curator.
