The Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes (b. 1960), known for her work that overlays Brazilian cultural imagery with references to Western modernist painting, presents seven large paintings and seven collages at the Pavilion of Applied Arts. Raised under the Brazilian military dictatorship of 1964-‘85, Milhazes rose to prominence in the 1980s as part of a new generation of artists who preferred painting to the prevailing conceptual practices of the previous decade. Many of them were included in the historic 1984 exhibition Como vai você, Geração 80? (How Are You, 80s Generation?), which marked a return to color and painterly expression. “We wanted the freedom to express ourselves and develop our own language,” says the artist. This does not mean they were apolitical or lacking in social consciousness: “We were criticized by people who said our work was the expression of an ‘empty mind,’ but in fact it was exactly the opposite. I have been political all my life, but not always in an apparent way.” Geração Oitenta (80s Generation), the generic term often associated with Milhazes and other artists of the same age, was not so much a movement as a moment that reflected the optimism of the time, as the military regime began to collapse and Brazilian democracy emerged. The artist had already been to Venice in 2003, when she represented Brazil at the 50th Biennale Arte. The project of the Pavilion of Applied Arts, curated this year by Adriano Pedrosa, is now at its eighth edition and is the result of collaboration between La Biennale and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London.

Geração Oitenta (1980s Generation): what did it mean for you to be part of that historical ‘moment’ in Brazil and how did it influence your art?
I believe that my generation built an important legacy for Brazilian art. I have a degree in Social Communication and Journalism, and in 1980 I entered the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, for a summer course. I continued my studies there until 1983, when I started, together with other young artists, my first studio. This generation came of age during the Military Dictatorship. At that time, the School functioned almost as an act of resistance. Teachers such as Luiz Áquila, Charles Watson, Ronaldo Macedo, John Nicholson, Celeida Tostes were all artists and made their studios out of the art school space. It was a meeting point that provided us students with a very rich exchange as well as a space to build strong friendships that last to these days. Charles Watson was my main teacher and despite being a newly arrived foreigner from Scotland, he understood what I wanted to bring to my language development in painting. I selected fabrics from Carnival and popular festivals costumes as fine arts materials research, and his conceptual provocations were essential in this process. He helped me understand the plastic possibilities at the beginning of my language formation. The program of the art school was developed by the teachers/ artists. It was quite vivid and based on practice. It was very important during this dry and dark period of Brazilian time that art and cultural life would keep their existence alive. It was not an organized platform but a way to make a statement, we are here, we are not going to stop, we continue to believe in culture and art education. In 1984, one year before the end of the Dictatorship, an exhibition called Como vai você, Geração 80 (lit. How are you, Generation 80), with works by 123 young artists from all over the country, took place at Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage (EAV – Parque Lage). It will be its 40th anniversary this year. It was a kind of happening, a great call for freedom! We were finally able to think, express ourselves, and had our life routine normalized!

Your works are the result of a slow but steady process; what role and significance do you attribute to time?
Painting has been the center of my development as an artist. My process is about evolution. I feel like a scientist, introducing new elements and questions to the existing ones that provoke a chain reaction, which will evolve to a new plasticity, renewing its existence. That’s what nature does. Time is crucial for my studio practice. For the kind of artist I am, whatever is going to happen will happen in the studio. You need to listen to the art you make, there is always a dialogue between the artist and the work. During the pandemic, I introduced a new method to my studio practice and started to work with preparatory drawings for my compositions. That allowed me to think visually about all the possibilities for the composition before going to the canvas itself. It opens an interesting door for the process. To draw is a kind of writing, you can experiment with the composition, forms, and colors. The work, no matter the chosen medium, has its own time, its own understanding, and a good result will come after a respectful relationship.

Your works are the result of a slow but steady process; what role and significance do you attribute to time?
Painting has been the center of my development as an artist. My process is about evolution. I feel like a scientist, introducing new elements and questions to the existing ones that provoke a chain reaction, which will evolve to a new plasticity, renewing its existence. That’s what nature does. Time is crucial for my studio practice. For the kind of artist I am, whatever is going to happen will happen in the studio. You need to listen to the art you make, there is always a dialogue between the artist and the work. During the pandemic, I introduced a new method to my studio practice and started to work with preparatory drawings for my compositions. That allowed me to think visually about all the possibilities for the composition before going to the canvas itself. It opens an interesting door for the process. To draw is a kind of writing, you can experiment with the composition, forms, and colors. The work, no matter the chosen medium, has its own time, its own understanding, and a good result will come after a respectful relationship.

Latin America and Europe. Origins and cultural blending are fundamental elements of Brazil and consequently of its artistic language. How has this trait become the founding element of your art, and how, at the same time, has your art translated it into a personal and unique aesthetic language, also through a broadened perspective towards applied arts, women’s work, and the so-called ‘folk art’?
I’m an artist from the Tropics and the context I grew up, live, and work in makes me think differently. Sources range from modernism to the baroque, from the so called arte popular to pop culture, from fashion to jewelry, from the very history of art to nature, from architecture to abstraction. I’m an artist engaged with handmade practice. All different kinds of art that require the hands of a human motivate me. That spirit, that structure. I think I introduced something new into abstract art, experimenting with the freedom of mixing things in a different order. Using geometry tools, I was able to organize my imagination (Iwona Blaswick). I created a conceptual system that is also about rigor, beauty, and pleasure. A mathematical dream. I’ve been receiving good support from the art world, but it has been long and challenging to be recognized as a serious artist. I have touched ‘dangerous’ subjects as a painter, and on top of it, I am a woman, and from South America. I have no fear, though, and I believe in the power of art and the power of human beings.

To balance your colors, you don’t rely on color theory or special formulas but rather on intuition. You have stated: ‘I don’t fear color.’ What is your exploration in this regard?
Color combinations are the essence of my work. If I don’t feel that the color construction is ready, I cannot say that a painting is finished. My work also proposes a spirit of lively rhythm and harmony of movement creating something of a vertigo. The colour combination will make it happen, depending on the way you mix and select the proportion for each of them. If you have one color picked and add another one to it, you will start a conflict, and I’m interested in this conflict, it’s a healthy one, without losers or winners, they are just contrasting. Colour combinations in my compositions evolved according to the evolution of my language and also depending on the medium I’m working with. In my paintings, from a more melancholic feeling during the 1990s to strong pulsive contrasts in the 2000s, when it meets optical and hard geometry, passing through poetic dialogue with popular art and art history. For the last decade, colours have revisited some earlier configuration and added a more cosmic and spiritual presence. Painting is a medium, but color is a natural power, an infinite one. It’s about life.

In 2003, you were selected to represent Brazil at the 50th Venice Biennale. What did this opportunity mean to you, and what significance does your participation assume today, more than twenty years later?
To represent Brazil in the 50th Venice Biennale was a sort of turning point in my career and I would say my studio practice. Rosángela Rennó was the artist at the first gallery of the Brazilian Pavilion and I was in the main one. The room was painted in yellow, and I hung eight large paintings. The curator was Alfons Hug. Everything went beyond my expectations: people from all over the world, at the same time, same place… It was very intense and I had strong feedback about my work, which gave a different perspective to it. This year, I see my participation as a gift. First of all, it is an occasion to celebrate Adriano Pedrosa as the curator of the Biennale. It’s a historical moment, the first time that a non-European or American curator is nominated as the Biennale curator. To be chosen by him gives me one more reason to be excited about my participation. On top of it, we developed a Special Project for the Applied Arts Pavilion together, which is a collaboration between the Biennale and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The V&A is one of my favorite museums in the world, and my passion for applied art has been a strong source of research for my work. I hope the visitors will enjoy the exhibition!