Feliciano Centurion - 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil
Cecilia Brunson Projects is delighted to announce the participation of Feliciano Centurión in the 33rd São Paulo Biennial taking place from September 7th until December 9th, 2018 at the Ciccillo Matarazzo Pavillion in São Paulo, located at the Ibirapuera Park.
http://33.bienal.org.br/pt/exposicao-individual-detalhe/5229
Born in Paraguay, Feliciano Centurión was a fundamental artist in the artistic renewal that took place in the 1990s in Buenos Aires, around the Ricardo Rojas Cultural Center. Artists of this generation exploited subjectivity in a variety of ways, often incorporating elements of popular culture that were previously thought to be kitschy or inappropriate.
Centurión's work is characterized by the use of textiles and embroidery, feminine fields of tradition and which have been central to Paraguayan culture since the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), or the Paraguayan War, when the country lost ninety of the male population. Centurión's early works usually featured extravagant portraits of animals, painted on cheap blankets. He also made a series of embroidered fabrics, in which he expressed desires or wants, almost like an intimate diary. When diagnosed as HIV positive, he began to report aspects of his illness in the works, culminating in the series of pillows presented at the end of this exhibition. The use of sentiment and traditionally feminine visual languages put Centurion in the context of artists who began to explore gender and sexuality throughout the 1990s. Although his career was tragically short, he remains a central but little-recognized figure of history of recent contemporary art. [GPB]
