This is Not an Apricot
Watercolor paintings on paper, 2009
Courtesy of Michel Samuel-Weis
In a market in Manaus, in the Amazon, Alves asked a fruit seller the names of the fruits in his stand. They were all very different, but they were all round, and in each case he said they were apricots, though none of them were. They were all indigenous fruits and he had no idea what they might otherwise be called.
Artist's bio
The Germany-based Brazilian artist Maria Thereza Alves (b. 1961, Brazil) researches social and cultural phenomena, focusing particularly on situations which question social circumstances. She has created a body of work concerned with investigating the histories and circumstances of particular localities in order to give witness to silenced histories. While aware of Western binaries such as nature and culture, art and politics, or art and daily life, she refuses to acknowledge them in her practice. She chooses instead to create spaces of agency and visibility for oppressed cultures through relational practices of collaboration that require constant movement across all such boundaries. Her artistic practice includes political texts, artists’ texts, videos, mixed media installations, drawings, photographs, performances, in situ works, talks and documentation of important moments in history.