Wanda Pimentel

Wanda Pimentel’s paintings employ a pop repertoire of home appliances, furniture and design objects to depict domestic life in urban Brazil from a female point of view. Starting from this environment, technological paraphernalia is then tied to the economic exploration of consumer society. Her emptied-out, diagrammatic environments bear witness to a daily scenery of appliances that insinuate a woman as their operator. Body parts, mostly lower limbs, appear here and there in her canvasses, suggesting a built-in libidinal economy, a diffuse sexuality that charges those spaces with latent sexual energy. 

Recent shows of Pimentel’s work include Wanda Pimentel: Os Anos Noventa, Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); Wanda Pimentel, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil (2020) e Envolvimentos, MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (2017). The artist had works in the group shows Vital Signs: Artists and the Body, MoMA – The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA (2024); Composições Para Tempos Insurgentes, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021); Constelação Clarice, Instituto Moreira Salles Paulista, São Paulo, Brazil (2021); Hábito/Habitante, Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2021); Mulheres Radicais: Arte Latino-Americana, 1965-1980, Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2018); Radical Women: Latin-American Art 1965-1980, The Brooklyn Museum, Nova York, USA (2017) e International Pop, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, USA (2016). 

Wanda Pimentel has works in important public collections, such as MoMA, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; MAC – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Niterói, Brazil; MALBA – Museu Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil; MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil e The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, USA.