Rivane Neuenschwander: Brasil de susto e sonho: um panorama na obra de Rivane Neuenschwander (Brazil of fear and dreams: Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, Brazil
Current exhibition
Installation Views
Press release
Open at Itaú Cultural (IC) through November 2, 2025, Brasil de susto e sonho: um panorama na obra de Rivane Neuenschwander is curated by journalist and researcher, Fabiana Moraes, and addresses Brazilian history from 1970s to present. Taking inspiration from social media, children's dreams, folk festivals, and observations from the artist's travels throughout Brazil, the show combines both new and established works across a variety of mediums and represents the breadth of Neuenschwander’s three decades long career.
Throughout the show, Neuenschwander insists on combining domains that culture distinguishes and segments. She makes (and invites us to make) incessant transitions, ranging from fear to dreams, from state violence to desire, from paranoia as social control to eroticism, from what makes animals (ants and spiders) to what makes us (language and allegory), and from what we experience to what is art. The work Atrás da porta embodies this by capturing the circulation of eroticism; taking what is inscribed and transmitted on public restroom doors as if they were in prehistoric caves, the artist collects and re-releases into art.
Similarly, À espreita series, which translates loosely to “lurking" or "lying in wait", includes 24 acrylic paintings on acid-free black paper, exploring both the psychoanalytic and political aspects of fear. Neuenschwander has been investigating childhood as a political space for years. In these works, she displays shadowy shapes drawn by the children themselves, based on workshops held as part of her research project, The Name of Fear. The shapes evoke monsters, ghosts, and spirits that, besides living in homes, inhabited basements and police stations during the Brazilian dictatorship.
The exhibition also includes Mestre Zenóbio e o Cordão da Bicharada (Master Zenóbio and the Animal Cord), a commissioned video made in collaboration with filmmaker Cao Guimarães. In this previously unreleased work, Neuenschwander and Guimarães are led by the Bicharada Band, a group, from Pará, made up of animals such as macaws, dolphins, and polar bears that sail the riverside waters of the Tocantins River on Carnival Tuesday.
Overall, Brasil de susto e sonho: um panorama na obra de Rivane Neuenschwander seems to lie in the space between joy and sadness, between transgression and affection, between the monsters and fantasies of the unconscious, between the barbarities of the world we live in and the possible worlds for which we strive.
As an internationally celebrated, multidisciplinary artist, Rivane Neuenschwander dedicates herself to issues of human subjectivity and social and political themes. She addresses fear, imagination, sexuality; touching on femininity, childhood, and our relationship with nature. Thus, she embraces once again, without neglecting humor and beauty, what is intimate and what transcends us.
As an internationally celebrated, multidisciplinary artist, Rivane Neuenschwander dedicates herself to issues of human subjectivity and social and political themes. She addresses fear, imagination, sexuality; touching on femininity, childhood, and our relationship with nature. Thus, she embraces once again, without neglecting humor and beauty, what is intimate and what transcends us.
