Néle Azevedo

Water artist of world-renown, Néle Azevado has revolutionized the notion of monument, brazenly taking her artistic practice to public spaces and implicating her creations in collective action. Azevado challenges the limits of scale and form, undertaking mass representation of the ephemeral on a scope that extends world-wide. The mind-bending contrasts inherent to her works – the indelible barely-there, the ever-present absence – inspire unending reflections on the permeabilities of philosophy and performance.

Partnering with water in its liquid, solid, and vaporous forms, Azevado’s creations engage with the aquatic in multi-sensory encounters: notably tactile, visual, and sonic. Staging its own dissolution, Azevado’s anti-art is conceived to dramatically disappear, transcribing the process of loss in sonic form or with a trace of fading color. By showcasing the serial over the extraordinary, the collective over the singular, her art reminds us of the overlooked yet essential elements that connect us across time and place. The pervasion of water in Azevado’s artistic practice could be said to reflect the aquatic properties of her influence; a veritable hydro-cycle of social cohesion that re-members the lost among the flow of the living.    – A. Street