Meet the Brazilian art collector championing some of Latin America’s most radical voices

‘I try to buy artists that really matter in this moment, who are talking about the problems that are happening right now,’ says the Brazilian collector and philanthropist Clarice Oliveira Tavares. Since moving to New York six years ago, Tavares has accelerated her collecting of contemporary Latin American work by artists including Dalton Paula, Paulo Nazareth, and the collaborative duo Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, all based in Brazil and addressing urgent issues associated with racism.

In her second home in Miami, Tavares displays work by many artists about whom she’s passionate, including abstract sculpture by Sonia Gomes. Based in São Paulo and now in her 70s, Gomes works with fabric, twisted and bound, recalling a bundle of belongings on a stick she made in her youth when she tried to escape her home. ‘She’s talking about suffering, how family can be monsters. Sometimes you’re born into a situation that is not right,’ says Tavares. The collector points to a large-scale photograph of a young Yanomami child from the Amazon by Claudia Andujar. The Swiss-born artist has documented the indigenous peoples of Brazil since the 1970s to help defend their territorial rights threatened by deforestation and gold mining. Proceeds from the sale of Andujar’s portraits is divided between artist, gallery and indigenous communities, Tavares notes.

Born in the south of Brazil, Tavares moved to Buenos Aires in the 1990s, where she got her degree in art history. Her collecting began with her first husband, Roberto Grünberg, who would buy her works of art as gifts. ‘His mother was a big collector and used to give great parties with musicians and artists and writers,’ says Tavares, who credits her former mother-in-law as a role model. Tavares’ first institutional stewardship was at the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), where she pushed for yearly exhibitions in support of local artists, including the first Argentine exhibitions of Marta Minujín and of Rogelio Polesello, whose geometric abstractions grace her home.

In New York, Tavares is bringing her advocacy to institutions including the Dia Art Foundation, where she’s on the leadership council. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she’s been part of the Latin American Art Initiative since 2016, Tavares recently joined the director’s fund supporting Max Hollein’s vision for the institution. This year, she’s funded the Swiss Institute of Art’s first residency for artists based in Latin America, providing the opportunity to live and work in New York for three months. ‘There’s no obligation to produce anything,’ she says. ‘It’s to have the experience.’ A panel of artists including Jac Leirner and Amalia Pica selected the first recipient, Abigail Reyes, born in 1984 in El Salvador.

Tavares fears that many in her homeland are turning a blind eye to the dangers of repression under the new far-right government in Brazil. ‘I moved to Argentina when the dictatorship was still fresh in people’s memories, and it forced people to look at that problem, not to repeat again,’ says Tavares. She is now watching the government in Brazil cut funding for public education and culture and the society grow more misogynist and homophobic, with one of the worst records of LGBTQ-related killings worldwide. She describes receiving entreaties for help from the young Brazilian artist Igor Vidor, whose work explicitly addresses the violence in the country. A work by Vidor, featuring two bright red painted rectangular panels, wedged apart by the bullet from a gun, is in Tavares’ collection. After the Brazilian presidential elections, Vidor felt his life was threatened and has now relocated to Berlin.

Tavares brushes off being labeled a ‘communist’ by some. She feels collecting is more than just buying beautiful art to have in your home, and voices her progressive views behind the scenes at institutions where she wields influence. ‘I think art should be a place for social change,’ she says.  

This article was originally published in Art Basel Miami Beach Magazine, available in select locations in the US.

Top image: Clarice Oliveira Tavares in front of Claudia Andujar's Untitled, 1970, from the series ‘Xicrin-Kayapó’. Courtesy of Clarice Oliveira Tavares.