Maria Thereza Alves (born 1961) is a Brazilian-born American and German installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, and writer.[1][2] She lives in Berlin.[3][4]
Maria Thereza Alves | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1961 (age 62–63) |
| Education | Cooper Union |
| Occupation(s) | Installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, writer |
| Known for | Seeds of Change (1999–now) |
| Movement | Conceptual art |
Early life and education
Maria Thereza Alves was born in São Paulo in 1961. When she was a child, her family moved to New York City to escape the dictatorship in Brazil. She attended Cooper Union, and graduated in architecture (BFA 1985).[3]
Career
In 1978, Alves presented at the United Nations Human Rights Committee meeting in Geneva on the indigenous population human rights abuses in Brazil.[3][5] She is a co-founder of the Partido Verde (or Green Party) of São Paulo in 1987.[3][5]
Her long-term art project Seeds of Change studies colonialism, slavery, migration, and the global commerce.[6][7] The series was started in 1999 and focuses on displaced plant seeds used to balance shipping vessels during the colonial period.[8] It has been held in port cities such as Marseille, Reposaari, Liverpool, Exeter–Topsham, Dunkirk, Bristol, New York City, and Antwerp.[7][9][8]
In 2016, she won the biennial Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics.[7][10] Her work was part of the group exhibition "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest" (2018) at Charité medical university.[2] Alves has participated in Documenta (13), Manifesta 12, Sharjah Biennal in 2017, and the Biennale of Sydney in 2020.[3][11] In 2021, Alves with the mural "Witnesses" was chosen by Associazione Tevereterno Onlus and Fondazione Quadriennale to replace William Kentridge’s mural on the same spot on the Tiber in Rome.[12]
Publications
- de Llano, Pedro, ed. (2018). Maria Thereza Alves: The Long Road to Xico / El largo camino a Xico, 1991–2015. Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-8499592381.