Adrianna Eu: heartwork
São Paulo – The Brazilian artist Adrianna Rabello Pereira Rodrigues Alves, who goes by the artist name Adrianna Eu, has a permanent installation at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Art. The piece was the theme of an exhibit at the Bispo do Rosário Contemporary Art Museum, in Rio de Janeiro, and may be the theme of other shows. Adrianna travelled to the Arab country five years ago to undertake an artist residency, whose outcome was the piece now on show in Amman.
The artist was invited to take part in a meeting of artists in Jordan after participating in the Valencia Biennial in Spain, 2007, where a representative of the Jordan Gallery saw her work. The meeting was attended by artists from other parts of the world, like Italy and Japan, and from local countries such as Egypt and Jordan itself. “They received me very well,” says Adrianna of her stay in the Arab country.
The symbol of her work is a red heart made of thread, so she decided to take 100 such hearts from Brazil to Jordan. In Jordan, she produced another 100 hearts using local materials. To this end, Adrianna went to the city of Jerash and purchased red- dyed lamb wool. History has it that local tribes used to wander through the desert and make carpets out of lamb wool.
Adrianna created the piece at the museum, and audiences witnessed the process as a performance. The result was an installation featuring the 200 hearts interwoven. “It does not matter where you were born, your culture, our hearts look at one another and recognize themselves,” she says. “I really enjoyed doing it,” says Adrianna regarding the piece.
Adrianna had never been to an Arab country, and she says she experienced a culture shock. She says she had read about the issue of females in those countries. “It disrupted my prejudice,” says Adrianna, who travelled believing that local women wore their garments out of obligation. That was not the case, she realized. “The women did not feel imprisoned, they did not seem revolted, they even looked upon women who did not wear the same clothes as them with a certain disdain,” the artist says.
Adrianna ended up getting very close with an Arab artist who has lived in Jordan since her childhood, Laila Demashgieh, and Demashgieh’s work featured in a show by Adrianna at the Bispo do Rosário Contemporary Art Museum, which closed this month. Laila photographed Adrianna’s performance at the Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts and created an installation using the pictures and the lamb wool. Laila sent the piece for the show at the museum in rio. Now, Adrianna is willing to hold another show, also based on the work she did in Jordanian land, but there are no set dates or museums yet.
The holder of a degree from the School of Visual Arts, Adrianna had her first show in 2005, at the 20th anniversary celebration of Rio’s Paço Imperial, and has since featured in several shows in Brazil and abroad. These have included the First International Performance Biennial, in Chile 2006, The Bolivarian Dream – Contemporary Latin American Video Art Show, also in Chile, Primeiro Encuentro Entre Dos Mares, in Valencia, Spain, among others. She has won the Salão Arte Pará art prize, among others.
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum