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Valeska Soares (born in 1957 in Belo Horizonte, MG) is a Brooklyn-based Brazilian sculptor and installation artist.

Soares's sculptures and installations repeatedly contrast slick, reflective materials, such as stainless steel and mirrors, with more ephemeral ones, like roses and lilies, revealing her interest in matters of subjectivity, perception, reflection, and distortion. These mirrored surfaces are used as a way to engage the viewers, who transition from passive spectator to active participant. To this point, she also uses numerous other sensory techniques, like sound, and smell, to create new environments and experiences.

Recurring themes in Soares's work are interpersonal relationships, glossaries, labyrinths, and gardens, elements through which the artist alludes to mythology, literature, and to art history itself.

Work
Valeska Soares received a Bachelor of Architecture from the Universidade Santa Úrsula, Rio de Janeiro, in 1987. In 1990, she completed a graduate certificate in the History of Art and Architecture from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica of Rio de Janeiro.

Shifting from utilizing her training in modernist architecture to making art that further allowed for explorations of phenomenology and desire, she presented her first solo exhibition in 1991 at Rio's Espao Cultural Sérig Porto. This same year she was awarded a Coordenao de Aperfeioamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) fellowship from Brazil's Ministry of Education. Upon moving to New York in 1992, Soares enrolled in an MFA program at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn. In 1994, after completing her MFA, she became a Doctor of Arts Candidate at the New York University School of Education and had her first New York solo exhibition at the Information Gallery.

http://www.alexandergray.com/artists/valeska-soares

http://enciclopedia.itaucultural.org.br/pessoa10770/valeska-soares

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/valeska-soares

Valeska Soares (b. 1957) is part of a vital generation of artists who began exhibiting professionally in Brazil during the late 1980s and early 1990s, including familiar names such as Jac Leirner, Ernesto Neto, and Adriana Varejão. Soares’ work, like that of her peers, follows the approach espoused by the Neo-Concrete movement in the 1960s. Soares began exhibiting in Belo Horizonte, Rio de Janeiro, and São Paulo and was championed by the influential Brazilian art dealer Marcantonio Vilaça, whose dedication to contemporary art facilitated the internationalization of Brazilian art made during the 1980s and 90s. In 1992 she moved to New York and in 2003 she received her first survey exhibition, Valeska Soares: Follies, which was presented by The Bronx Museum of the Arts and traveled to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey in Mexico.

Soares’ work has been included in numerous international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennales of 2011 and 2005; the São Paulo Biennials of 2009, 1998, and 1994; the Sharjah Biennial (2009), the Taipei Biennal (2006), the Liverpool Biennial (2004), inSITE San Diego/Tijuana (2000-01), and the Havana Biennial (1991).

http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/142132/valeska-soares-any-moment-now/