Adrians Black
Adrians Black ou Adriana Varella
Born in Rio/Brazil, lives and works in New York City for more than 20 years. Adrians Blackis a multi-disciplinary artist; they do audio-installations, photos,drawings, painting, performance, video-art-experimental, computer installation, site specific and public art.
Creates and organizes the AnarkoArtLab in NYC.
Founder of international art solidarity
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jja_X5mIrXE
Video clip of the campaign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B4CcX720DW4
Campaign:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDPDJ7AcpZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncYDrez3xew&t=1s
https://www.gojira-music.com/amazonia?ref=https://www.google.com/
Education
1991/94 Parque Lage School of Visual Arts - Rio/Brazil
1996/98 FAPERJ with Federal University of Rio de Janeiro / UNIARTE / Research in video art and video installation - Rio/Brazil
Public Art Project
2005
DDNA- (site specific) Lytton Plaza, University Street with Emerson Ave - Palo Alto, California. Now at Harvard Business School - Boston, MA
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2018
Getting Lost in Oneself (process) - BGSQD,Manhattan,NYC
New Configurations for a Queer Family -(Anarkoartlab) - Queens Museum, NY.
2010
Trans Pacific (Public Art Site Specific) and Trans Smalls Sketches) - Oi Future Museum of Art and Technology - Rio / Brazil
1994
Anthropophagous Banquet - 12 channels Video installation, Republic Museum, Rio / Brazil
Selected Group Exhibitions
2023
Gralha Azul - video art - Light Year - Manhattan Bridge - Leo Kuelbs Collection
2022
Stop - Performance - Drag Story hour - Queens Library
Cry of the earth – Ivy Brown Gallery – Soho NYC
Ukraine between two fires – site specific performance at Russia Consulate – in collaboration with Non Grata - NYC
2021
Indigenous blood no more any drop- site specific performance in front of the supreme court in Brasília, Brazil
Decolonize Amazonia- site specific performance in front of the stock exchange building, NYC
Collapse of consciousness, Site specific performance at ICE building - Manhattan NYC / Brooklyn Brigid
2020
Radar Queimadas (Public Art Performance)- Streets of NYC [Brooklyn/ Brooklyn Bridge/ Central Park/ Columbus Circle / Times Square]
2019
Bombing walls (Performance) - Last Frontier, Brooklyn and Grace Space Exhibition, Manhattan, NYC
Cracks in the Civilized Landscape - Film and Performance-ANARKOARTLAB - The Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival, Montreal, CA
Experiments on Trans-Architectural Bodies - KGB, East village, NYC
Experiments in Trans- Architectural Colors - NightClub, Brooklyn, NY
2017
ANARKOARTLAB - Skin of places - Secret Garden - Fort Tilden, NY
2014
Aimlessly - Beyond Limits: Post Global Biennale/San Diego Art Institute, CA
2013
Cracks in the civilized landscapes- Lesbian Herstory Archives, NYC
Resonance - Prism Breakup / Eyebeam -NYC
2012
Unlanguage - Mediations biennial - The Unknown - Poznan / Poland
ANARKOARTLAB - Occupy Revolution here and now, Living Theater, NYC
Cracks - Performance and video –Dimanche Rouge, Paris, France
2011
Cracks/ 10 channels video installation / Mix Experimental Festival NYC
Spectacles in Flames (Public Art Projects) /Flash: light Nuit Blanche/ New Museum, NYC
Chess- Anarko Art Festival – Deconstructing power; creating new routes – The Living Theater, NYC
Cracks drawings/Letters CATMChelsea Manhattan Art Gallery, NYC
NoTerritory - Lumen – Anarko Art Lab – Staten Island, NY
2010
Invented House - Endless Bridge (Manhattan Bridge), Leo Kuelbs Collections, Brooklyn and Berlin
2009
Meeting God - Mix Experimental Film Festival - Manhattan/NY
Transverse - The Map is not the territory - NYFA 2009 / Dumbo, Brooklyn, NY
Mirror Organism - Anarchist Art Lab / Living Theater, Manhattan, NY
Spur Brooklyn -The End. And...Latin Collector, Manhattan, NY
Transpiration - Other world resonances - Anarchist Art Lab / Living Theater, Manhattan, NY
Nuclei - Reproduction (Proposal) Anarchist Art Lab. / Living Theater , Manhattan, NY
Vein - Luminous Flux Video Art - Galapagos Art Space, Dumbo, NY
Meeting God - Future=Fertile - Leo Kuelbs Collection, Brooklyn, NY
Heliogabalus and Consciousness causes collapse-Anarchist Art Festival - Living Theater, Manhattan, NY
Transmutation Landscape - The Object is illuminated - Latin Collector Gallery, Manhattan, NY
2008
Invented House - Public Art Project - Streets of San Francisco- San Francisco, CA
Space within space - Leo Kuelbs Collection, Brooklyn, NY
Holy Holes: Absolute Stalls - "Consciousness causes collapse" - Dumbo Art Center, Brooklyn, NY
Manhattan FLOWER Bridge (Public Art Project Manhattan Bridge) DUMBO, NY
Staircase Public Art Project / Staircase Photo video Installation - Allied Kinetics - Leo Kuelbs Collection, Brooklyn,NY
2007
Action number 3 (Altar) / Exorcising the church - Public Art Project (entrance doors) - Judson Memorial Church - Manhattan, NY
2006
Spur Brooklyn - Video Installation - D.U.M.B.O under the bridge project, Brooklyn, NY
2005
Adam/Soldier - Photo Video installation -Red Ink Studios, San Francisco, CA
Actions number 1,2,3 - Video Art - San Francisco County Fair Building on Golden Gate Park - San Francisco, CA
Video installations - and Video Art - Itau Cultural -Made in Brazil project -ZKM(Germany) WRO (Poland) Videoart Center Tokyo (Japan),Triangle (France), SESC Sao Paulo and Videobrasil (Brazil)
2004
Possession - Photo Installation- Art Explosion, San Francisco, CA
2003
Identity - "Landing " - Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA Ariadne (project 3) - Video - Venus film festival - New York City - NY
2002
DDNA1 - Anno Domini- Phantom Galleries - San Jose windows project - Temporary public art - San Jose, CA
Ariadne (project 1) - video installation and photos - Ballaco Gallery - San Francisco, CA
2001
Interference on Public TV broadcast - 24th International Biennial of Art, Ljubljana - Slovenia
Paradoxical Images - Video Installations - School of Visual Arts at Parque Lage - Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil
Deviation of the feminine - Nomad extension (Constructed Identity) and Narcissus - video installation - CCCEF - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Spur (Dialogs) - video installation "Rumos Visuais" Project / Itaú Cultural - Brazil / São Paulo / Recife / Minas Gerais - Brazil
Seeing trough her eyes - video installation - FUNART National Foundation for the Arts - Rio de Janeiro- Brazil
1999
Random Field - Video Installation - Gallery for Contemporary Arts at the Telephone Museum - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Living in the randomness - Video Etchings - "Exposição Espaço gravado" Gallery for Contemporary Arts at the Telephone Museum - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Ego Formula - Video Etchings - Bennett University - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
1998
Circular Frequency - Video Installation - School of Visual Arts at Parque Lage - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Book -Video - Object " Borderline " - Video Installation, Paco das Artes - SP - Brazil
Zone 0 - Video Installation - Museum of Modern Art - Rio de Janeiro -Brazil
1997
Temporary Body- dance -video installation / Centro Cultural Itaú - SP- Brazil
In This is What is in This - video installation /DBKV Deutsch-Brasilianische Kulturelle in Berlin MAM Receiver of screams- video installation -Exhibition
O Grito / National Museum of Fine Arts- RJ- Brazil
1996
Dodecaedro - Video Installation - Calouste Gulbekian Art Center- Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Electronic Egg - Sculpture - Estácio de Sá University - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
1995
Axis - Video Installation -Exhibition: Interdinamiótico - Fluminense Federal University- Rio de Janeiro
I.T.E.M. - Video Installation - Exhibition: A cor do Rio / CCC- RJ Collect Machine - Video Installation- Exhibition: Códigos Sincrônicos / CCC- Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
1994
Monad - video installation - Exhibition: Neural network / Parque Lage School of Visual Arts / RJ - Brazil
Khrónos - video installation - Parque Lage School of Visual Arts / Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
1991
Memory of the Hell - Dance video installation - Exhibition: "The Divine Comedy"/MAM Museum of Modern Art - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Awards & Grants
2009
NYFA New York Foundation for the Arts - The Mentoring Program
1998
Prize - Zone 0 (No - Territory) - video installation, XVI Brazilian National Exhibit of Contemporary Art / Museum of Modern Arts - RJ - Brazil
1997
Great Prize - Anthropophagous Banquet - video installation - ABRA Project Paço of Arts - SP - Brazil
1995
Prize - Filter / Fold and Point - video installation - XV Brazilian National Exhibit of Contemporary Art/National Museum of Arts - RJ- Brazil
1994
Great Prize - Monad - video installation - II Exhibition MAM Bahia/Museum of Modern Art - BA- Brazil
Collection
Museum of Modern Art - Bahia - Brazil
FUNARTE National Museum of Fine Arts - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil
Gerald Brett - USA
Susan Diridon - USA
Harvard Business school - USA
Books
TRANS - 300 pages book about Adriana Varella works by Oi Future Museum / Rio de Janeiro- Brazil
Made in Brazil - Three Decades of Brazilian Video by Arlindo Machado pages - 21,36,146,154,155,167
Adrians Varella (pronoun they / their / them) by Natasha Marzliak/Universidade Estadual de Campinas e/Université Panthéon-Sorbonne Paris 1
The Artist = Artist who dreams of new possibilities of being, living and relating in urban collective spaces. They are member of the art collective AnarkoArtLab (NYC), which proposes urban interventions, trasmedia events and collective creation performances that break with the idea of the artist as a myth and the institutionalized art system and market. Their artworks suggest a disrupt with the project of modernity / coloniality, which is capitalist / global, patriarchal and racist, operating potency space-times for the uprising of identities / subjectivities that give power to the collectivity.
Adrians Black or Adriana Varella is a Brazilian artist that needed to leave Brazil 20 years ago because they are Trans. After some of their friends were murder because they were Trans, Adrians decided moved to SF and after to NYC. Adrians way of thinking, making, and presenting art is situated in a position of resistance to hierarchical social structures, especially about the bipartite division of genders, women’s oppression, and the marginality and violence to which the LGBTQIA + community is subjected. It also encompasses other social problems such as class issues, racism, and the forest people’s extinction, as is a great part of the Brazilian indigenous population. All those fronts of struggle, consequences of colonialism, and the neoliberal logic, its updated manifestation, are recognized by the artist and assembled in their intersectional way of producing art by building networks and connections between different social demands. Adrians Varella's production is located in the intersectional view of capitalist oppression and also in an optimistic perspective of establishing links between the multiple networks of social demands that pursue a place of horizontality.
Adrians Black’s political motivation they provoke their gesture, which unfolds in public and collective art projects that aim to deterritorialize spaces, discourses and languages conditioned to capitalism and patriarchy. Their projects consist in hybrid devices that assemble different media and supports, such as video, cinema, photography, drawing, sculpture, as well as the insertion of appropriated objects and performance actions, expanding the field of experimentation and diluting the borders of languages. The construction of these imagetic fields takes place outside institutionalized art spaces. With a modified space-time, their environments are composed of fragments of the "real", embedded in systems of signs that reverberate in new narratives, senses and thoughts. Stripped of immediate messages to be interpreted, their devices are heterotopic spaces for immersive experiences, providing the opportunity of reconfiguration of ways of being, seeing and acting in the world and in relation to others. By embracing active modes of image perception, Adrians Varella's devices have the power to, in the light of Deleuze, force thought (2006) in a society where entrenched mindsets are rooted in instances such as social groups, the nuclear family, schools, churches and the workplace, Varella's work is coming to confront them.
To read full statement : http://www.adrianavarella.net/experimental-hospital
"Social and Environmental Demands Through the Art of TransArchitecture Project: Deterritorializing and Building Networks" by Natasha Marzliak
https://zenodo.org/record/6338609#.Yin6Pi_5QnU
To read the full content: https://artstyle-editions.org/issue-9/