Valeska Soares

Soares’s bodies of work are linked thematically, but deploy diverse strategies to address issues and concerns through materials, forms, and experiences. Utilizing tools of minimalism and conceptualism, her work embraces emotion and humanity, mining territories of love, intimacy, and desire; loss and longing; and memory and language. She has explored these elusive themes through a myriad of tactics, infusing objects such as mirrors, clocks, glass, books, furniture, and flora with poetics, narratives, and alchemy. The resulting artworks—paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, and audio experiences—morph the physical and the psychological, the body and the mind. In Soares’s refined visual language, reflective objects suggest reflective thinking, concealed images reveal unexpected mysteries, and accumulated words disintegrate linear narrative.

Desire is a central theme in Soares’s practice, enticing viewers though an engagement with all five senses. Her installations have included perfume, decaying flowers, or spirits; these works result in phenomenological experiences that shift perception and expectations. In her words, “desire is like a vanishing point: every time you go towards it, it recedes a little.” Another motif in her work is the transference of personal memory and collective history; the artist frequently re-purposes second hand objects that she considers charged by “the lives and memories [of former owners], becoming for a moment in time, part of those personal narratives as each one travels from subject to subject.” Canvases made of book covers convene and re-orient individual narratives; collections of empty antique cake platters or half-filled drinking glasses suggest rituals or celebrations that have been suspended in time. Soares’s art encourages the widest possible viewer experience, rejecting the idea of a singular reading or message. Describing this interest in unrestricted opportunities for engagement, she states, “what interests me is the surprise in how each person is going to perceive the piece. And even the same person, on different days—depending on the sun and the moon, a dream they had, how they woke up—the work is never the same.”

In 2018, a retrospective of Valeska Soares’s work was on view at The Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil. Her work was the subject of the major mid-career survey, Any Moment Now, at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, CA (2017), followed by the Phoenix Art Museum, AZ (2018). Previous surveys of the artist’s work have been presented by the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, Mexico; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY (both 2003); and Museu de arte da Pampulha, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (2002).

Other solo exhibitions include those presented at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT (2017); The Jewish Museum, New York (2015); Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2002); Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, CA (1999); Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, OR (1998); Laumeier Sculpture Park and Museum, Saint Louis, MO (1996); and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY (1995). Soares has participated in the Lyon Bienniale (2022) and numerous other international exhibitions, including two Venice Biennales (2011, 2005); several São Paulo Biennials (2009, 1998, 1994); the Sharjah Biennial (2009); the Taipei Biennial (2006); the Liverpool Biennial (2004); inSITE San Diego/Tijuana (2000–01); and the Havana Biennial (1991).

Soares’s artwork is included in many private and public collections, including The Bronx Museum of the Arts, NY; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Dallas Museum of Art, TX; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Museum d’Art Contemporary de Barcelona, Spain; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Solomon R. Guggenheim, New York, NY; Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Fundacion “la Caixa,” Barcelona, Spain; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Museu de Arte Contemporânea–MAC in São Paulo, Brazil; Museu de Arte Moderna–MAM, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Inhotim–Centro de Arte Contemporânea, Brumadinho, Brazil; Museo de Art Contemporáneo–MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico, and others. Soares has been the recipient of multiple grants and awards, including the Coordenao de Aperfeioamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) fellowship, Brazil's Ministry of Education; Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, The Getty Foundation, Los Angeles; Ida Ely Rubin Artist in Residence Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Anonymous Was a Woman Award, New York; and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, New York.

Valeska Soares is also represented by Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil.