Curated by Adriano Pedrosa

In the edgy sumptuousness of Beatriz Milhazes’s allusions to local flora, Rio’s urban verve and the legacies of Brazilian Baroque sit alongside references to both modernist painting—Brazilian and otherwise—and the traces of colonialist expansion in earlier European art. It’s a seductive and disturbing blend. Organized by Adriano Pedrosa, this first full-scale museum survey brings Milhazes’s paintings from the past decade back to her home city. The emphasis here is on recurrent themes and motifs rather than chronology. A banner project is installed in the Centro Cultural’s grand rotunda, and the show is accompanied by a bilingual catalogue including critical essays by Pedrosa, Paulo Herkenhoff, and Barry Schwabsky.

— Michael Archer