In this introductory essay to Nazareth Pacheco’s 1997exhibition at the Galeria Valú Ória, Tadeu Chiarelli reviews the artist’s career since her first exhibitions at the start of the decade. Chiarelli emphasizes Pacheco’s internal consistency that became apparent in her later work. Beginning with her first “dependent objects,” which were exhibited in 1990 at the Centro Cultural São Paulo, Pacheco presented items used for cutting and piercing whose violent action recalled the boxes she made with objects from her personal life. These referred to the various treatments she underwent for the congenital deformity she suffered (exhibited in 1993). In later works created in 1994–95, Pacheco used medical surgical instruments associated with the manipulation of the female body. Chiarelli identifies a distinct “cathartic” quality in her work, indicating the undeniable presence of a perverse accusation that was explicitly expressed in this particular exhibition through the use of seductive, sharp-edged jewels. There were undoubtedly formal and conceptual differences during this period that underscore a process of freeing the artist from autobiographical references in order to delve into a more all-encompassing approach to a woman’s body.

As he closely followed Nazareth Pacheco’s creative development, beginning in the early 1990s, the art critic and curator Tadeu Chiarelli explored the full range of her poiética [her doing] by placing her in the Brazilian art scene and in a broader context of the history of modern and contemporary art. Chiarelli considered the artist to be one of the greatest of her generation, describing her as a talented young artist who had managed to “subvert the avalanche of formulas” imposed by a post-minimalist “tradition—that was excessively strong in São Paulo—and guaranteeing her a well-deserved place among Modernist maestros such as Man Ray and Meret Oppenheim, who knew how to make the best of “objectual construction” by adding highly subversive aspects and elements to everyday and seemingly harmless objects.

Tadeu Chiarelli is a curator and the current director of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo. He has also worked as a researcher and curator in the fields of photography and nineteenth- and twentieth-century Brazilian art. His work identified how art and photography are connected to the art world and its circuits, with an emphasis on social issues. He has played a fundamental role in the understanding and promotion of photography as a key element in Brazilian art production in recent decades.

[As complementary reading see, in the ICAA digital archive, the following texts written by Tadeu Chiarelli: “15 artistas brasileiros: colocando dobradiças na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110500),

“Amanhã hoje: Casa triângulo de 1988 a 1995” (doc. no. 1111344), “Apontamentos para um mapa das artes plásticas em São Paulo durante 1985” (doc. no. 1111351), “Apropriações: o lugar da arte como questão” (doc. no. 1111252), “Armadilhas para Narciso” (doc. no. 1111253), “Considerações sobre o uso de imagens de segunda geração na arte contemporânea” (doc. no. 1110502), “Da arte nacional brasileira para a arte brasileira internacional” (doc. no. 1075144), “Emmanuel Nassar: erudito e popular” (doc. no. 1110457), “Fotografía en Brasil: años 90 = Photography in Brazil in the 1990s” (doc. no. 1110894), “A gravura no espelho” (doc. no. 1111250), “A gravura paulista significa” (doc. no. 1111251), “Jac Leirner” (doc. no. 1111254), “La mirada contaminada: otras fotografías = The contaminated gaze: other photographies” (doc. no. 1110893), “Realidade e simulacro” (doc. no. 1111255), “Sobre a fotografia brasileira atual = On current Brazilian photography” (doc. no. 1110895), “Sobre as pinturas de Mônica Nador” (doc. no. 1111256), and “O tridimensional na arte brasileira dos anos 80 e 90: genealogias, superações” (doc. no. 1111352)].