BRÍGIDA BALTAR

Galeria Nara Roesler | Rio de Janeiro presents Siblings, the first exhibition of Brígida Baltar the Rio venue, and the fifth since she started to work with the gallery in 2001.

Siblings shows experiences lived by the artist in her own body and transformed into metafors. It is about the waiting and the expectation, since the artist needed to go through a bone marrow transplant in 2015.

Thereby, the works relate to her perspective about a test called chimerism. The chimera that would announce the compatibility to her sibling donor.

The doctor’s science meets the chimera myth, who has three heads and exhales monstrosity, to translate the changes that occur in a body that now has another one inside itself.

The images and colors are evident in new marks, bruisings, petechiae, another taste. In self-portraits, the artist exceeds herself in body hair, and chooses the embroidery, which is the process that takes more to be done and hides the passage of time, reflecting how the artist felt during her waiting. The results are abstractions, organic geometry in blood color, purplish and in different formats.

The exhibition also features embroideries of compatible plant species (hybrid species), arbitrary biological associations, again with two beings in a single one. The monstera deliciosa and the red leaf begonia, mushrooms and beets, and more mushrooms with a banana heart plant.

The plant’s chimerism also appears in bronze sculptures, some of them entitled “siblings”. Bronze is the material of eternity as well as the eternal affection of matched siblings.

about the artist
Brígida Baltar (b. 1959, Rio de Janeiro) lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. She studied at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Baltar began to develop her work in the 1990s, through small poetic gestures that took place around her home and studio. Biennials include the 25th São Paulo Biennial (2002); The 17th Cerveira Biennial, in Cerveira, Portugal (2013); The Nature of things — Biennial of the Americas, Denver, USA (2010); Panorama de arte brasileira (Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2007) and the 5th Havana Biennial, Cuba (1994). Selected international exhibitions include:
Cruzamentos: Contemporary Art in Brazil, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, EUA (2014); SAM Art Project, Paris, France (2012); The peripatetic school: itinerant drawing from Latin America , Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, England, (2011); Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia, (2012); and Constructing views: experimental film and video from Brazil, New Museum, New York, USA (2010). Her works are in many collections, including: Colección Isabel y Agustín Coppel, Mexico D.F., Mexico; Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, USA; Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, Brazil; Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, Middlesbrough, England; Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil; among others.