JANAINA WAGNER
MAIN EXHIBITIONS
[upcoming]
I am molten matter sliding from the core of Earth to tell you interior things - Galeria Sardenberg (São Paulo, BR)
Quando o segundo sol chegar / um cometa nos teus olhos - Planetário do Ibirapuera (São Paulo, BR)
Quebrante - OCA - 14th Bienal de Arquitetura de São Paulo (São Paulo, BR)
Curupira e a máquina do destino - COP 30 - Museu do Amanhã (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
Manos Negativas, manos kefzeadas, Quando o segundo sol chegar / um cometa nos teus olhos, Quebrante, Curupira e a máquina do destino - Le Fresnoy-studio national des arts contemporains (Turcoing, FR)
SOLO
2025 Sala de Vídeo Janaina Wagner – Museu de Arte de São Paulo (São Paulo, BR)
A comet in your eyes – Sursock Museum (Beirut, LB)
2024 Quando o segundo sol chegar (Cometa) – Centro Cultural do Cariri (Crato, BR)
2023 Cinema Caverna – Lanterna Mágica – Projeto Vênus (São Paulo, BR)
Baleia Fantasma – Pivô (São Paulo, BR)
2015 Decupagem/ Crônica de um final anunciado - Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto (Ribeirão Preto, BR)
GROUP
2025 At the End of a World - Färgfabriken Konsthall (Stockholm, SE)
2024 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)
2023 22ª Bienal SESC Videobrasil - SESC 24 de Maio (São Paulo, BR)
2022 Ópera Citoplasmática – Museu Oscar Niemeyer (Curitiba, BR)
Aliens are temporary - Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien (Berlin, DE)
2021 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)
2020 Casa Carioca – MAR Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
2019 Panorama 21 - Les revenants - Le Fresnoy Studio National des Arts Contemporains (Turcoing, FR)
2018 Festival Mondes Possibles - Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (Paris, FR)
(São Paulo, BR)
Ensaio de Tração - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo (São Paulo, BR)
2016 Permanências e destruições - Torre H (Rio de Janeiro, BR)
Bolsa Pampulha - Museu de Arte da Pampulha (Belo Horizonte, BR)
2015 Hipótese e horizonte - Observatório - (São Paulo, BR)
2014 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