Maria Thereza Alves (b. Brazil, 1961) has worked and exhibited internationally since the 1980s, creating a body of work investigating the histories and circumstances of particular localities to give witness to silenced histories. In 1978, as a member of the International Indian Treaty Council, Alves made an official presentation of human rights abuses of the Indigenous population of Brazil at the U.N. Human Rights Commission in Geneva. She was also one of the founding members of the Green Party of São Paulo in 1987.
Alves has participated in numerous biennials including documenta:15 (2022), Quito Panamerican Biennale (2021), Ural Biennale (2021), Sydney Biennale (2020), Toronto Biennale (2019), Manifesta 12 in Palermo and 7 in Trento, Sharjah Biennial (2017), Sao Paulo Biennale (2016 and 2010), Berlin Biennale 8 (2014), documenta:13 (2012), Taipei Biennale (2012), X Lyon Biennale (2009), Guangzhou Triennale 3 (2008), and the Second Havana Biennale. She has had solo exhibitions at the banks of the Paraguay River between the borders of Bolivia and Brazil (1992); La Estación Gallery in Cuernavaca, Mexico (1990), MUAC in Mexico City (2015), and at CAAC in Seville (2015), among others. Alves is the recipient of the Vera List Prize for Art and Politics (2016-2018). Upcoming exhibitions include (re)connecting.earth as part of the Biennale of Art and Urban Nature curated by Bernard Vienat, Geneva, Switzerland; and Green Snake, a group exhibition curated by Kathryn Weir at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong. A recent monograph, Maria Thereza Alves: Seeds of Change (edited by Carin Kuoni and Wilma Lukatsch) was published by Amherst College Press and the Vera List Center for Art and Politics, The New School, in April 2023. Her other books are Recipes for Survival, published by University of Texas Press; The Return of a Lake, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König; and Thieves and Murderers in Naples: A Brief History on Families, Colonization, Immense Wealth, Land Theft, Art and the Valle de Xico Community Museum in Mexico, published by Di Paolo Edizioni.
