Anna Maria Maiolino’s work investigates the politics of location through identity, language, and the body. Maiolino immigrated from Italy to Brazil in the early 1960s, where she developed her practice in response to constantlychanging social subjects amid the violence and censorship of Brazil’s twentyyearlong military dictatorship. Indícios, a series of works that Maiolino produced between 2000 and 2003, are embroideries on paper that are sandwiched between plexiglass panels to allow for doublesided viewing, which adds complexity to the movements, paths, and trails that the threads create. As in many of her works, the curves of these threads resemble a map filled with ridges of hills and valleys that can be seen from an aerial perspective. They may also be interpreted as surgical scars or tangled hairs, activating their agency as fluid and transmutable symbols with multilayered meanings. Through such mapping processes, Maiolino’s series frequently traverses conflicting notions of space such as navigational familiarity and unfamiliarity, interior and exterior, presence and absence, and surface and depth. Her work thus becomes politically charged by revealing temporary identities that persist on the “peripheries” as well as destabilizing existing boundaries and values.
