Poetic Earth: Anna Maria Maiolino’s Six Decades of Transformation and Resistance

Near Belém’s waterfront, hundreds of eggs form a square on the ground, their presence quietly unsettling, as if something could go wrong at any moment. There is already a small crowd when I arrive. I hear two women talking about Anna Maria Maiolino, recalling past performances, as others linger at the edges, pulled in mid-commute, unsure what they are looking at but unwilling to leave. As more people gather, we form a loose perimeter around the eggs. And then, at six o’clock, Maiolino appears. The crowd settles without being asked. She moves slowly around the edge of the arrangement in a long black wool coat, her walking stick marking each step. She speaks in Portuguese, asking if we are immigrants. The question lands gently but does not leave.

Another performer joins her and leads her forward. Together they enter the field of eggs. Each step is deliberate. The sound you expect, the crack, never comes. Instead there is a held breath, shared across the audience, as bodies move through this fragile terrain without breaking it. As the sun lowers, more performers join, weaving their way through the same precarious space. Arms lift, palms open. The gesture reads as both surrender and something else, something closer to invocation.

This is KA, Maiolino’s reactivation of Entrevidas, first conceived in 1981 during Brazil’s transition out of dictatorship. Then, as now, the work stages a simple but charged action. To walk among eggs is to confront the fragility of life and the constant risk of its rupture. In this iteration, the raised arms draw from ancient Egyptian symbolism, where the hieroglyph “ka” signifies life force and spirit. Here, it becomes a plea. Not passive, not resigned, but insistently human.

“I am an artist and also a political being; my work is influenced by my surroundings, now as it was before,” Maiolino tells me. “I was born in Italy during the Second World War and, before emigrating at the age of eight, I witnessed the destruction caused by the bombs. Humanity repeats itself, given what is happening now in various parts of the world. I created the first Entrevidas right at the start of Brazil’s democratic transition, at the end of the dictatorship. However, it is a work that still opposes wars across the globe and the everyday violence to which human beings are exposed in major cities.”

As the blue sky turns shades of pink and orange, the crowd disperses slowly, as if reluctant to break the spell. The movement continues inland, towards MAAT, where the exhibition Poetic Earth, curated by João Pinharanda and Sérgio Mah, unfolds inside the museum’s vast oval gallery. Designed by Amanda Levete, the building curves along Lisbon’s Tagus, its tiled surface catching what remains of the evening.

Maiolino’s work stretches across more than six decades, and this exhibition brings together drawings, photographs, and sculptures that trace a trajectory grounded in both material and gesture. Born in Italy in 1942, raised partly in Venezuela, based in Brazil since the 1960s, and living briefly in the US, her practice has long resisted fixed belonging. Yet she is clear about where she stands. “The cultures of these places have certainly influenced me and enriched my imagination. However, I consider myself a Brazilian artist and owe a great deal to Brazilian art.”

In the gallery, her early works from the 1970s and 1980s line the walls, intimate in scale, attentive to the body and its representation. They speak to a moment when Brazilian artists were pushing back against the dominance of abstraction, calling for subjectivity and lived experience, often under the pressure of political repression. But it is the central arena that holds the eye. Here, large clay installations occupy the floor, some of the biggest Maiolino has ever made.

The clay still feels close to the body. You sense it in the way it’s been pressed, rolled, worked over by hand. Each piece carries those small, reiterated actions, building up slowly rather than being fixed all at once. Still alive, the sculptures dry slowly over the course of the exhibition, changing colour, rigidifying, rupturing.

“It’s a good thing crises exist, as they bring about change. It is important to bear in mind that I began making art in 1958 and my poetic discourse has evolved over time. In the 1980s, I believe that much of contemporary art was questioning – and I too – what the future held for art from that point onwards. That was when I discovered clay and began creating these works through the primal actions of the hands: compacting the clay and building up layers on the body of the piece,” the artist shares.

Repetition is central here, but not only as routine. “I believe that in my art, just as with any human being engaged in any kind of work, when there is repetition, there is a greater purpose in what one does. In the case of my installations from the series Terra Modelada, 1993/2026, and the sculptures Do Barro à Escultura, 2026, repetition allows me to extend the duration of the work and, in theory, to reach infinity. I seek a totality that is never concluded, for each gesture carries within itself the next one that will appear.”

There is a quiet radicalism in this approach. Clay, in Maiolino’s hands, is not simply material but a way of thinking through time, labour, and transformation. She affirms, “That’s right, the passage of time becomes visible, just as it is visible throughout nature. Clay is the archetypal prototype of matter. Over time, it dries out, hardens, cracks and may eventually turn back into dust.”

It is difficult not to carry the memory of the eggs into this space. Fragility, endurance, the thin line between preservation and collapse. The exhibition arrives in Lisbon after Maiolino received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2024, a recognition that feels both overdue and entirely fitting. Yet nothing here feels like a retrospective in the traditional sense. The works remain open, unfinished in spirit, still becoming.

As I move through the gallery, the earlier question returns. Not only about migration or identity, but about how one moves through a world that is always on the brink of breaking. Maiolino does not offer resolution. Instead, she offers a way of proceeding, step by careful step, attentive to what is underfoot, and to what might still be held together.



Anna Maria Maiolino: Poetic Earth is on view at MAAT – Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon until 31 August 2026.



Feature image: View of the exhibition Anna Maria Maiolino: Poetic Earth at MAAT, 2026. Photo: Pedro Tropa. Courtesy EDP Foundation.