Lot Essay
Adriana Varejão has always been interested in Brazil's colonial heritage. In her work, she traces aesthetic sources that came into vogue in Brazil through the influence of the Portuguese rule and the African slave trade. Thus, architectural elements and decorative objects as well as other more profane symbols appear as elements of her disquieting compositions. The present painting depicts fragments of a dismembered body hanging from a butcher's hanger. Inprinted on the trompe l'oeil tile is the face of Christ and the sexual organs of a man. Like in most of Varejão's work, religious and popular connotations are suggested and the spectator is again confronted with issues of memory, history and desire.