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Rocha Pitta, Thiago

Brazilian, b. 1980

BiographyBrazilian artist Thiago Rocha Pitta works with the media of photography, video, installation, and watercolor. In his diverse body of work, he is interacting with the environment, focusing on topics such as geological processes, human’s relationship to nature, and transformations of our planet. The work in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s collection is from the artist’s series Temporal Maps of a Non-Sedimented Land (2015) that includes videos and photographs, depicting different desert terrains in Argentina. The works capture small interventions in the land, such as water or sand poured across rock. Although the alterations are enacted by the artist, they reference larger elemental forces that shape the earth’s surface. Rocha Pitta considers his images “maps” that meditate on the impossibility of charting the passage of time and the incremental shifts that slowly form the bedrock of our planet.

Thiago Rocha Pitta was born in 1980 in Tiradentes, Brazil. He received the Marcantonio Vilaça Prize, Brazil (2005), and the Open Your Mind Prize, Switzerland (2009). His work was shown in numerous exhibitions internationally, including at the Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo; 21er Haus, Vienna; Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro; Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin; Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich; and P.S1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Rocha Pitta’s work is in the public collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Maison Européene de la Photographie, Paris; Hara Museum, Tokyo; Julia Stoschek Collection, Dusseldorf; Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro; and Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo.