Statement/Bio

Statement

The issue of cutting or clipping as a working method has always interested her, be it visual, verbal, in painting, photo or video. Selecting, cutting, clipping are artistic, narrative, and historical processes that determine our daily walk, constantly weaving and building new memories, forging new personal, collective, or social narratives.

For Varela, what is important is the idea and the images to which the plastic elaboration of the idea can give rise. This is not the only link we can find in her work with the precepts of conceptual art. For several years she created around the same theme, letting the images impose their own narratives. The solutions thus obtained demonstrated the conceptual importance of the applied technology. The use of photography and video, for example, has been a necessary experience to encourage new speculations; among others, it has allowed her to introduce the painting into the photograph, as she does in her paintings with a painting within the painting, or to deepen her interest in the imprecision of images.

She began her career in the 60s within Pop, of which she is a key figure in Brazil and Latin America, in a line very connected with comic and cinema of that time in his native country. Few years after she evolved into Tropicalism and New Figuration. In the most tropicalist stage, the usual elements, identifiable with the idea associated with this area of the world, are incorporated into the work, in strong flat colors, sometimes just silhouetted. In this line could be framed the subsequent series of Brazilian characters of the indigenous or folkloric imaginary, in the same potent colors but worked with nuances. As in all his work from that moment on, the superimposition of spaces and times is always present, so that realism is altered by light reflections and visual obstacles, sometimes also by the deconstruction in different planes. She also sometimes approaches the cannibalistic practice of appropriating everything she identifies with to build the image of her own self.

In her most recent works, she constructs new dynamic spaces, in which the narrative appears as a fluid environment, where seemingly disconnected figures follow particular roads, intersected by flows of luminous colors. These images are invitations to reflect on creative processes and new spatiality’s, on the mechanisms that structure and define the construction of alternative spaces and mixed temporalities. A pretext to reflect on the ambiguities that run through our daily lives.

In her recent works, she constructs new dynamic spaces, in which the narrative appears as a fluid environment, where seemingly disconnected figures follow particular roads, intersected by flows of luminous colors. These images are invitations to reflect on creative processes and new spatiality’s, on the mechanisms that structure and define the construction of alternative spaces and mixed temporalities. A pretext to reflect on the ambiguities that run through our daily lives.

Despite not having made inroads into a practice very involved in politics, her interest in reflecting and narrating what has happened around her has led her to address issues related to gender and social issues, these linked to the indigenous world.

Bio

Cybèle Varela was born in Petrópolis (RJ) in 1943. In 1959 she received her first award as an artist, given by the Association of Brazilian Artists, at the National Museum of Fine Arts, Rio de Janeiro. Between 1962 and 1966, she studied visual arts at the Museum of Modern Art (MAM) in Rio de Janeiro.

She began her career as a painter and object creator, later including photography and video in her repertoire. During the 1960s she develops a critical and often ironic look at urban life, influenced by the American Pop movement, linked to Tropicalism in Rio de Janeiro. She receives several awards, among them: Young Contemporary at MAC/USP-SP (1967), Award at XXIV Paraná (1967), Silver Medal Award at XIX Modern Art of São Paulo, Banestado Award at MAC de Campinas (Campinas),

among others. He also participates in the Bienal of São Paulo in 1967, 1969, and 1981, and also in the 1st and 2nd Bienal of Bahia in 1966 and 1968.

In 1966, she held a first solo exhibition at the Imperial Museum in Petrópolis. In Rio de Janeiro, she exhibits in private galleries and institutional spaces, and her work is highly appreciated by critics such as Frederico de Morais, Clarival do Prado Valadares, Walmir Ayala, Jaime Mauricio, among others.

In 1968, she received a first scholarship from the French government for a stay in Paris, where she studied Art History at the Ecole du Louvre. In 1970, she moved to Paris after receiving another scholarship to the Ecole du Louvre, later studying Social Anthropology at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes at the Sorbonne.

In 1972, her first solo exhibition in Paris took place at the Galerie Debret. For this exhibition, Cybèle created a series of object-games, which required the participation of the public. Between 1973 and 1975, she was artist in residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris).

In Paris, her work focused on the self-reflective representation of Nature, an aspect she developed in her paintings, photographs and videos from the series “Image”. In this research she studied the ambiguous representation of the visible, and was part of the current of Narrative Figuration. Her work was highly appreciated by the critics, especially by the critic of New Realism Pierre Restany, who wrorte the introduction to the catalog of the show at the Bonino Gallery in Rio de Janeiro (1975), as well as Jean-Marie Dunoyer (critic of the newspaper Le Monde), Jeanine Warnod (critic of

the newspaper Le Figaro), Gérald Gassiot-Talabot (director of the art magazine Opus), among others.

In 1975, she was selected among the 30 best artists of the year, in the exhibition “30 Creators”, traveling through France, where she was the only woman in the group.

In the late 1970s, she moved to Switzerland (Geneva), where she had a solo show at the Musée Cantonal des Beaux-arts de Lausanne (1980). See also exhibited at the Musée Rath in Geneva and twice at Art Basel. Her work progressively evolved towards a geometric construction of space. In these works, the ambiguity of the real is transcribed through the interposition of fragmentary elements, such as the image of a tree or clouds, presented in photographs or videos.

She represented Brazil at the Art Museum of the Americas in 1987, in Washington DC, with more than 50 works.

In 1992, she inaugurated the contemporary platform of the Imperial Museum of Petrópolis with a solo show entitled ‘In the Gardens of the Imperial Museum’. With this series of works, she recalled her childhood memories, spent playing in the gardens of the museum, under the shade of secular trees.

In 1997, the Brazilian Government donates one of her paintings to the permanent collection of the United Nations in Geneva, exhibited at the Palais des Nations.

In the early 2000s, she mades a series of works on the theme of Cangaceiros, which she exhibited at the National Museum of Fine Arts (Rio de Janeiro, 2003) and at the Museum of Contemporary Art at USP (São Paulo, 2005), in the show “Surroundings”.

In 2009, she participated in the first edition of the show elles@centrepompidou.fr, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with her video entitled “Image” (1976), later participating in the Brazilian editions of the show, at the CCBB in Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte.

Recently, with the global interest in Pop Art and the London show at Tate Modern “The World Goes Pop”, Cybèle Varela has been recognized as one of the key artists of this movement in Brazil.

The artist’s research has always been taken with strong colors, very Brazilian colors, which has become a constant since the 1960s until today. For Cybèle, what counts is the image, its relationship with the visible world and the territory of the unknown that crosses our daily lives. This image can be in movement, as in her videos, photos, or paintings, but it is the strangeness, the innovation, and the vision of her creations that always remain.

Her last solo show in Brazil was in 2013-14 at MAC de Niteroi, entitled “Espaços Simultâneos”. In 2018, the Fundaçao Brasilea (Basel, Switzerland) organizes the artist’s first retrospective exhibition. Recent collectives include: Cybèle Varela. Tropicalismo Remixed.

Recent group exhibitions include: Imaginarios Pop, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de la Unversidade de Sâo Paulo (BR), with an emphasis on her artistic production from the 1960s-1970s. Un tiempo proprio. Liberarse de las ataduras de lo cotidiano, Centre Pompidou, Malaga, 2022-2023, (ES) ; Insolitos, Museu de arte contemporanea do Parana (MAC-PR), Curitiba (2022, Brazil), Narrative Figuration 60s-70s, Richard Taittinger Gallery, New York, (2021, USA), AI-5 50 anos. It’s not over yet, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, (2018, Brazil).