Maria Thereza Alves

Maria Thereza Alves (born 1961) is a Brazilian-born American and German installation artist, video artist, activist, filmmaker, and writer. She lives in Berlin.

Early life and education Maria Thereza Alves was born in São Paulo in 1961. When she was a child, her family moved to New York City to escape the dictatorship in Brazil. She attended Cooper Union, and graduated in architecture (BFA 1985). She is a co-founder of the Partido Verde (or Green Party) of São Paulo in 1987. The series was started in 1999 and focuses on displaced plant seeds used to balance shipping vessels during the colonial period.

In 2016, she won the biennial Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics. Her work was part of the group exhibition "Disappearing Legacies: The World as Forest" (2018) at Charité medical university. In 2021, Alves with the mural "Witnesses" was chosen by Associazione Tevereterno Onlus and Fondazione Quadriennale to replace William Kentridge’s mural on the same spot on the Tiber in Rome.

Her former partner was artist Jimmie Durham, who died in 2021.

Publications