Anna Bella Geiger is a Brazilian multi-disciplinary artist of Jewish-Polish ancestry and professor at the Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage. Her art often touches upon the theme of the Brazilians’ contemporary identity (brasilidade) and its political aspects, particularly the colonial and postcolonial history and the regime imposed by the military junta that ruled the country from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. To face those complex issues Geiger uses various contexts from anthropology, astronomy and alchemy to modern utopias and game theory. However, the artist’s main source of inspiration is maps. Cartography is in Geiger’s interpretation an extraordinary phenomenon, linking science, art and politics. Maps are always a combination of knowledge, ideology and individual aesthetic vision, which makes them a perfect canvas for artistic intervention.

guide: Sara Herczyńska