‘Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão. Between Your Teeth’, published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition held at CAM – Gulbenkian in Lisbon, explores convergences in the work of Paula Rego (Lisbon, 1935 – London, 2022) and Adriana Varejão (Rio de Janeiro, 1964), although they belong to different generations and come from different backgrounds.

Curated by Adriana Varejão, Helena de Freitas, and Victor Gorgulho, the exhibition, which presents nearly 80 works – including paintings, engravings, sculptures, and installations – is divided into thirteen thematic rooms. The long conversation between the three curators, which forms the main text of the catalogue, reflects the structure of the exhibition, addressing the different thematic nodes and revealing the conceptual and methodological process that guided the selection of works.

The two essays by Raphael Fonseca and Elena Crippa, which complete the catalogue, offer further insights, by highlighting several similarities in the practice of the two artists from a critical perspective.

The title – ‘Between Your Teeth’ – is a line taken from the 1974 ‘Poemas aos homens do nosso tempo’ [Poems to the men of our time] by the Brazilian poet and novelist, Hilda Hilst, in a clear allusion to the dictatorial regime that had begun in Brazil in the previous decade. Hilst describes and criticises the power associated to greed, conquest, profit and exploitation. In their representations of literal and metaphorical bodies, Paula Rego and Adriana Varejão reflect on how patriarchy, colonialism and all forms of oppression mutually interact, ‘chewing up’ people and their stories.

This is the artists’ first joint exhibition in Portugal, having already exhibited together in Rio de Janeiro (Carpintaria, 2017), when Paula Rego was still alive.

The catalogue fosters the encounter between Adriana Varejão, who has developed pioneering work in the field of postcolonial thought, and the work of Paula Rego, whose political force is developed by a productive tension between a private register and its public dimension, expanding the interpretive universe of the two artists.