MAURICIO DIAS & WALTER RIEDWEG (Dias b. 1964, Brazil / Riedweg b. 1955, Switzerland)
“Our artistic practice and our daily lives, which we’ve shared for nearly twenty years, unfurls in that territory between one and the other, an unknown terrain of desire and fear, of a world to explore, that’s out there to be discovered.”
Dias & Riedweg includes Mauricio de Mello Dias (b. 1964, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and Walter Stephan Riedweg (b. 1955, Luzern, Switzerland), who have worked together since 1993 to make collaborative and interdisciplinary public art projects, videos, and performances.
Dias studied in the school of fine arts at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro from 1982 to 1986. After traveling through Europe, he took courses in engraving at the Schule für Gestaltung in Basel, Switzerland. He subsequently studied at the Printmaking Workshop in New York. Riedweg’s formal education focused upon theater and music; he studied at the Musik Academie in Luzern, the Scuola di Teatro Dimitri in Verscio, Switzerland, and participated in several workshops at the Performance Studies Department at New York University.
Together, Dias & Riedweg combine video, ethnography, and performance art to tackle social and political issues; in their projects, the artists examine human subjectivity as it is conditioned by ideas of nationhood and mediated by contemporary technology. Based in Rio de Janeiro, the duo often looks to the conditions of that city’s favela cultures to consider how a city is constituted. Much of their production is based upon social exclusion. Using the tools of both documentary and fiction, the duo make works which narrate experiences of social alienation and distance, and they consider these experiences as immigrants themselves: “Perhaps the condition of the immigrant, as someone who brushes up against difference at every turn, is almost the ideal condition for poetic creation,” notes Riedweg.
2018 | Dias & Riedweg - Cameracontato - Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo |
2017 | Von Früh Bis Spät, Museum of Art Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland |
| Galerie Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, September- October, Paris France |
| Museo Di Arte Contemporaneo De Roma (MACRO), November- December, Rome Italy |
2016 | Dias & Riedweg: Weg Zurück Da, Kuntsraum Artyourself, Sursee Switzerland |
2015 | Dias & Riedweg: Peñas de Pena, Auditorium Roma, Italy |
| Dias & Riedweg – Nada Absolutamente Nada, Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
2014 | Histórias Mestiças, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Histórias Frias e Chapa Quente, Casa França Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Little Stories of Modesty and Doubt, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Luzern, Switzerland |
2013 | Amparo y Desamparo, Fotograma 13, Montevideo, Uruguay |
| Possible Archives, Kunsthal Nikolaj, Copenhagen, Denmark |
2012 | Até que a rua nos separe, Centro de Artes Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
| Corpo Santo, Museum der Prinzhorn Sammlung, Heidelberg, Germany |
| Estranhamente Possível, Museu de Arte Moderna da Bahia, Salvador, Brazil |
2011 | Dias & Riedweg: Peñas de Pena, CajaSol, Jerez de la Frontera, Spain; CajaSol, Seville, Spain |
2010 | Cold Stories, Solo Show at FIAC Art Fair, Bendana-Pinel Art Contemporain, Paris, France |
| Dias & Riedweg: Peñas de Pena, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA |
| The Periphery of your Eyes, Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico |
| Che – Project Room, PINTA London, Galería Filomena Soares, London, UK |
2009 | Paraísos Possíveis – Dias & Riedweg, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Sentidos sem direccão e outras direcções de sentido, Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon, Portugal |
| … and it becomes something else, Americas Society, New York, NY, USA |
| Moving Truck and Recent Works, Argos, Festival des Arts, Brussels, Belgium |
| Chaque chose sa place, autre place autre chose, Galerie Bendana-Pinel, Paris, France |
2008 | Elsewhere at the same time, Kunsthalle Oslo, Norway |
| Of The Universe of the Ball, Arco Solo Projects 2008, Galeria Filomena Soares, Madrid, Spain |
| Funk Staden, Vleeshal Middelburg, Holland |
2007 | Funk Staden and Voracidad Máxima, Documenta 12, Kassel, Germany |
| Promenade, Frieze Outdoor Solo Project, Galeria Filomena Soares, London, United Kingdom |
| Gravities, Museu da República, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
2006 | Les Valises pour Marcel, Miami Basel Art Fair, Galeria Vermelho |
| Juksa, Lofoten International Art Festival, Fugløya, Norwegen |
2005 | The Unfinished World, Espace Le Plateau, Commissioned by Festival d'Automne à Paris, Paris, France |
| Cabra Criada (Grown Beast), Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Sambing Camera, Villa Arson, Nice, France |
2004 | Possibly speaking about the same, Kiasma Museum of Contempory Art, Helsinki, Finland |
2003 | Possibly speaking about the same, Macba Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain |
2002 | The Other begins where our senses meet the world, Centro Cultural Banco Do Brasil, Rio De Janeiro, Brazil |
2000 | Dias & Riedweg, Kunsthalle Palazzo, Liestal, Switzerland |
1997 | Devotionalia, Stroom, The Hague |
1996 | Devotionalia, Musée d’art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland |
| Devotionalia, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil |
Centro Cultural Belém, Coleção Joe Berardo, Lisbon, Portugal
Colección Bergé, Madrid, Spain
Frac Ile–de–France — Le Plateau, Paris, France
Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland
Kunstkredit Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Kunstmuseum Luzern, Switzerland
Kunststiftung Heute, Bern, Switzerland
Musée National d’art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo (MUAC), Mexico City, Mexico
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), Spain
Museu de Arte do Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Coleção Pedro Barbosa, São Paulo, Brazil
Museu de Arte Moderna de Rio de Janeiro, Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes de Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles, CA, USA
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Houston, TX, USA
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, UK
Pinacoteca de São Paulo, Brazil
Videothek, Basel, Switzerland
