JANAINA WAGNER
MAIN EXHIBITIONS
[upcoming]
I am molten matter sliding from the core of Earth to tell you interior things - Galeria Sardenberg (BR)
Quando o segundo sol chegar / um cometa nos teus olhos - Planetário do Ibirapuera (BR)
Quebrante - OCA - 14th Bienal de Arquitetura de São Paulo (BR)
Curupira e a máquina do destino - COP 30 - Museu do Amanhã (BR)
Trilogia Transamazônica - Le Fresnoy-studio national des arts contemporains (FR)
SOLO
2024
2023
2015
A comet in your eyes – Sursock Museum (Beirut, LB)
Quando o segundo sol chegar (Cometa) – Centro Cultural do Cariri (Crato, BR)
Cinema Caverna – Lanterna Mágica – Projeto Vênus (São Paulo, BR)
Baleia Fantasma – Pivô (São Paulo, BR)
Decupagem/ Crônica de um final anunciado - Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (Ribeirão Preto, BR)
2024
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2016
2015
2014
Era uma vez: história do céu e da terra – Pinacoteca de São Paulo (São Paulo, BR)
Ensaios de Uma Coleção – Galeria Municipal do Porto (Porto, PT)
Summertime – SUPERCOLLIDER - Brand Library (Los Angeles, USA)
Imaginar futuros com gestos silenciosos – Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo (Montevideo, UY)
22ª Bienal SESC Videobrasil - SESC 24 de Maio (São Paulo, BR)
Ópera Citoplasmática – Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Curitiba, BR)
Aliens are temporary - Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien (Berlin, DE)
Thinking beyond: moving-images for a post-pandemic world – Manifattura Tabacchi (Florence, IT)
Cuando no hay sombra es mediodía - Nube Gallery (Santa Cruz, BO)
A natural history of ruins - Pivô (São Paulo, BR)
Casa Carioca – MAR Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
Panorama 21 - Les revenants - Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains (Turcoing, FR)
Festival Mondes Possibles - Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Paris, FR)
(São Paulo, BR)
Ensaio de Tração - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo, BR)
Permanências e destruições - Torre H (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
Bolsa Pampulha - Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, BR)
Hipótese e horizonte - Observatório - (São Paulo, BR)
4º Prêmio EDP nas Artes – Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, BR)
Estado de Suspensão – Coletor (São Paulo, BR)
UM COMETA NOS TEUS OLHOS [A COMET IN YOUR EYES] | 2025
Twin Galeries - Sursock Museum, Beirut, LB
Set against the Brazilian landscape, this exhibition transports us into unfamiliar geographies and Histories, offering a reflection on modernity and the Anthropocene, while being permeated by a sense of doom. The installation of Janaina Wagner exhibited at the Museum is the last chapter of her trilogy invested in the Rodavia Transamazônica [Transamazon Highway], the mega infrastructural project that started during the civic-military dictatorship in Brazil (1964-1985). Also known as BR-230, the civic-military dictatorship's promotion of “significant settlement expansion to create a development frontier through roadbuilding projects, the construction of hydroelectric dams, and large-scale livestock production in the Amazon. The trilogy of Wagner weaves competing and interlacing timelines—the time of the road and the planetary time—or that of stones, dinosaurs, myths, and legends. As such, it is situated at the threshold, a cross-over, offering a glimpse of what was, what is, and what will (be)come. Modernity is represented by the road, which engulfs the Amazon, its ecosystem, and its original inhabitants. In reaction, it avenges, takes revenge, through elusive characters, muted but lurking—in caves, subtitles, off-road. Terrible characters, such as the Curupira animated by passion—anger, revenge, despair, but also love. The arrival of a Second Sun comes to symbolize a cosmic turn of events. Can modernity be defeated? Wagner does not offer us answers, but only a cosmology she has gathered along the BR-230 highway; a cosmoecology.
Curated by Marie-Nour Hechaime