Anna Bella Geiger (b. 1933, Rio de Janeiro) is one of Brazil’s most important living artists. Belonging to the first generation of conceptual artists in South America, Geiger’s truly experimental practice includes pioneering video work, innovative printmaking, performance, installations and painting. Her multidisciplinary oeuvre draws on scientific, philosophical and spiritual sources in order to critically examine the sociopolitical context of Brazil.
Geiger has explored contemporary national debates around culture, identity and history in her work since the early 1970s. Her profound study of physical and geographic space led her to investigate the historical procedure of mapping. Referred to as “geo-poetry,” her work constitutes a formal play that fuses the visual language of cartography with the malleability of language and soft, fluid materials, while also incorporating the fragmentation of graphic and video techniques. The artist’s far-reaching deconstructions of the world map trace the relationship between image, territory and power, and inevitably includes reflections on Western modernity and its exclusions and stereotypes. She developed these issues further in series devoted to the art system and the position of the artist.