Climbing the stairs toward the grand terrace of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library, on Broadway between 155 and 156 Street, visitors will discover a fantastical and menacing scene in the distance. A green Amazonian anaconda appears to be coiling around the monumental equestrian bronze statue by sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington that has stood in front of the museum since 1927. With its head thrusting skyward and its mouth open, the threatening serpent seems about to devour the Spanish hero El Cid, who triumphantly rides the galloping steed while raising aloft a battle staff and banner.

This outdoor spectacle serves as the arresting introduction to Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget We Come From the Tropics, the first-ever New York museum solo exhibition for the celebrated Brazilian artist based in Rio de Janeiro. Varejão refers to the serpentine sculpture Sucuri (Anaconda) , 2025, as an intervention, a conceptual challenge to the ethos of the monumental, heroic figure exemplified by the Huntington bronze. Made of painted fiberglass, Sucuri proposes a remarkable send-up of the 1927 ode to Hispanic machismo while exploring the confrontational dichotomy of nature versus human civilization, and the clash of the tame (the horse) and the wild (the serpent) in the animal kingdom.

Inside the museum, Varejão presents six large-scale works from her ongoing Plate series. Inspired by French, Spanish, and Portuguese potters of the sixteenth through nineteenth century, Varejão’s large bowl-like tondos, about five feet in diameter, stand nearly six feet high on metal tripods placed in the center of the main gallery, a Baroque revival arcade. The colorful relief sculptures correspond gracefully with the display of historic ceramic works from the museum’s permanent collection that she curated and installed in vitrines running along one long wall. Heavily encrusted with vegetal and animal forms, her works mimic the look and technique of glazed ceramics of the European Baroque and South American Colonial periods. Varejão’s sculptures, however, are made of bright oil pigments on fiberglass and resin. The choice of materials resolves practical issues of weight, fragility, and the logistics of transporting ceramic works of this scale. In addition, the bright palette and artificiality of the sculptural materials serve to situate the works firmly within the realm of contemporary art, avoiding a feeling of nostalgia or any aim to revive the past.   

Varejão’s work addresses urgent concerns for the preservation of the environment, especially regarding Brazil’s uncertain efforts to properly maintain the Amazon rainforest and protect its indigenous population from the onslaught of deforestation and commercial development. For the past two decades, Varejão has been conducting research with the Yanomami and other indigenous people of the Amazon basin. Each of the Plates features Amazonian flora and fauna painted and sculpted in densely packed arrangements within the concave structures. Many of the images represent endangered species.  

Among the most striking works, Guaraná (2025) shows a group of slithering green boa constrictors, echoing the giant anaconda wrapped around the statue on the terrace. There are blue and green frogs here, too, and a cluster of five bulbous, 3-D red orbs in the lower portion that seem to sprout human eyes with black pupils. There is an edgy surrealist quality to the work.

Varejão, in fact, gives a nod to Surrealism in the exhibition title, Don’t Forget We Come From the Tropics, which refers to a quote by Brazilian modernist sculptor Maria Martins (1894–1973), whose works were embraced by the Surrealists. The red shapes depict guaraná berries that symbolize resurrection and healing for many indigenous people of the Amazon. On the reverse of each plate, Varejão has painted a meticulous design that alludes to other cultures and ceramic styles, often inspired by works in the museum’s collection. The blue-and-white floral design on the reverse of Guaraná is based on that of Ming Dynasty Chinese bowls.

Urutau (2025), another stunning piece, features on the concave side a large relief sculpture of an owl-like nocturnal bird—a type of potoo with glowing eyes—known in Brazil as “mother of the moon.”  The reverse shows a red-brown geometric design on a beige background that pays tribute to pre-Columbian Amazonian Marajoara pottery. In this work and throughout the show, Varejão offers a potent and multifaceted examination of nature’s conflicted but often symbiotic relationship with human culture. Pictorially, the Plates center on a specific geographical locale, but thematically, they resonate far beyond the Amazon rainforest.         

Adriana Varejão: Don’t Forget We Come From the Tropics, 2025 is on view at The Hispanic Society Museum and Library, New York, March 27-June 22.