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Anna Bella Geiger

Acting

Biography

Since the 1950s, Anna Bella Geiger has integrated maps and elements of natural history into much of her videos, collages, paintings, sculptures, and prints. In such works, she reconsiders notions of territory and identity, particularly in her native Brazil. Geiger’s 2018 installation for Rio de Janeiro’s Solar dos Abacaxis, for example, resembled a series of museum dioramas of pyramids, Babylonian gardens, and an Israeli mikvah (a ritual bath). Geiger has made distorted maps of the globe and various countries from embroidery, wax-filled filing cabinets, and copper plate engravings. Such work questions the geographical structures and systems that we take for granted.

Known For

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Much of Anna Bella Geiger’s work engages with geography. She begins the video “Mapas elementares no. 1” by drawing the outline of a world map on paper. In the background, Brazilian musician Chico Buarque’s well-known song “Meu caro amigo,” released the same year, accompanies her activity. Though it sounds cheerful, Buarque’s song is written as a letter to a friend in exile. It mixes references to everyday life (soccer, samba, music, rain, and sun) with statements such as, “What I really want to tell you is that things here are black,” an allusion to the dark circumstances surrounding the heightened violence and censorship under Brazil’s military regime. Buarque’s refrain prompts Geiger to begin blackening the outline of Brazil on her map. Geiger includes herself to demonstrate that the drawing of maps depends heavily on the mapmaker’s vision, or “the artist’s hand.” Her use of video to record the process further emphasizes that mapping is always contingent and in-progress.

Mapas elementares no. 1 [Elementary Maps No. 1]

1976Movie