Frida Baranek

Frida Baranek (born 1961) is a Brazilian sculptor known for creating large sculptural works that incorporate fibers and industrial materials such as plates, rods, and iron or steel wires as commentary on industrialization and the environment in Brazil.

Biography Frida Baranek was born in Rio de Janeiro. She graduated from Universidade Santa Úrsula, with a bachelor's degree in architecture in 1983, and from Parsons School of Design with a master's degree in sculpture in 1985. She has lived and worked in São Paulo, Paris, Berlin, and New York City. Frida currently live in Miami. She owns one studio in Rio de Janeiro and one in Miami.

Others take the form of fences and screens to evoke mass and space e.g. Untitled, (1988) iron flexible, plates and stones and Untitled, (1991) steel rods and wire. Latent references to women's work are also incorporated in her sculptures. The artist also knits and weaves thin thread into womb and bag-like forms like in her sculpture "Swirls Bege," (2008). Baranek's overwhelming tangles and whiskered sacs refer to the sexual symbol of women's hair; this is not only a symbol of inclination, but of danger as well. Other materials used in her sculptures are stones, springs, bars, glass, air chambers, tires, rubber balls, water, sand, etc.

Her works are held by the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, University of São Paulo, the Kemper Art Museum, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts. They divorced in 2015.

Exhibitions 1985 Petite Galerie, Rio de Janeiro 1993 Stux Gallery, New York 1993 ULTRAMODERN: The Art of Contemporary Brazil, National Museum of Women in the Arts 2004 HAP Galeria, Rio de Janeiro 2006 Frida Baranek - Lavish Pause / Lange Pause, Galerie im Traklhaus, Salzburg 2009 Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brazil 2013 Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi 2013 H.A.P. Galeria, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 2014 Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brazil 2014 Heike Moras Art, London, UK 2017 Untitled Art Fair, Miami, USA 2019 "Liminality", Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, Brasil

Awards

1992 Fulbright International Fellowship in the Visual Arts, US 1993 Studio Residency, Paris 2019 Studio Residency, Miami 2019 Women Who Make History, Miami 2019 Recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grants