São Paulo, Brazil, 1961 \ She lives and works between Naples, Italy, and Berlin, Germany
Maria Thereza Alves has worked and exhibited internationally since the 1980s, creating a body of work investigating the histories and circumstances of particular localities to give witness to silenced histories. Her projects are researched-based and develop out of her interactions with the physical and social environments of the places she lives, or visits for exhibitions and residencies. These projects begin in response to local needs and proceed through a process of dialogue that is often facilitated between material and environmental realities and social circumstances.
Alves recently presented commissioned projects for the 2024 edition of the Lagos Biennial. In 2023, she held a solo exhibition at Galeria Jaqueline Martins in São Paulo and, in the same year, she presented the LABINAC project, a design collective founded by her and artist Jimmy Durham, for the first time in Latin America. The exhibition took place simultaneously at Casa Zaslzupin and Galeria Jaqueline Martins. She has taken part in important international exhibitions such as the 13th (2012) and 15th (2022) editions of the Kassel Documenta; the Quito Pan-American Biennial (2021); the Ural Biennial (2021); the Sydney Biennial (2020); and the Toronto Biennial (2019); Manifesta 12 in Palermo and 7 in Trento; São Paulo Biennial (2016 and 2010); 8th Berlin Biennial; Sharjah Biennial (2017); Taipei Biennial (2012); 10th Lyon Biennial (2009); 3rd Guangzhou Triennial (2008); and 2nd Havana Biennial (1986), among others. The artist was awarded the Vera List Prize for Art and Politics in the 2016-2018 edition.
In 1978, as a member of the International Indian Treaty Council, Alves made an official presentation of human rights abuses of the Indigenous population of Brazil at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. Alves was one of the founding members of the Green Party of Sao Paulo in 1987. Her recent book is Thieves and Murderers in Naples: A Brief History on Families, Colonization, Immense Wealth, Land Theft, Art and the Valle de Xico Community Museum in Mexico.
