Janaina Wagner produces films, drawings, and installations that combine references from art history, cinema, and literature, utilizing fiction to discuss the relationships of control that human beings establish with the world.
Inside the Video Room, we show a trilogy of films made on the Rodovia Transamazônica [Transamazon Highway] in 2021–2025. Known as BR-230, the project for the Transamazônica was implemented during Brazil’s civil-military dictatorship (1964–1985) aiming to integrate the Amazon with the other parts of the country. Inaugurated when it was still incomplete in 1972, the project has undergone few changes since then, and it has caused a significant set of social and environmental imbalances. In addressing this territory, Wagner discusses the contradictions and consequences of developmental projects.
Her videos intertwine the real and the imaginary, producing a collage of fragments from several narratives. Curupira e a máquina do destino [Curupira and the Machine of Destiny] (2021) correlates the Curupira, a mythological being, with ways of preserving nature and subverting different forms of oppression. Quebrante (2024) is an experimental documentary honoring the teacher Dona Erismar, known as “the cave woman,” for discovering several caves in the Amazon. Finally, Quando o segundo Sol chegar / Um cometa nos teus olhos [When the Second Sun Arrives / A Comet in Your Eyes] (2025) is an unreleased video-installation in two channels with scenes of the Transamazônica under a fleeting glow that suggests a “second Sun” approaching Earth. The images are set against a text that tells a physical and existential journey, countering cosmic time with everyday life along the highway.
Outside the Video Room, we exhibit Green Flesh, Green Flash: Vaca Frankenstein [Green Flesh, Green Flash, Frankenstein Cow] (2022), a character featured in other videos shown here. Created using three-dimensional modeling software, Frankenstein Cow is based on Nelore cattle, the species most often bred by livestock farmers invading the Amazon. In the video, the cow heads toward a citrus-green sun in a red landscape, evoking a continuous sunset or slash-and-burn practice.
Curupira e a máquina do destino is an imagined sequel of the film Iracema: uma Transa Amazônica (1974), by Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna. Quebrante is loosely based on Robert Smithson’s The Truly Underground Cinema (1971) and Maya Deren’s The Very Eye of the Night (1958). Quando o segundo sol chegar / Um cometa nos teus olhos is loosely based on Anne Carson’s Autobiography of Red (2021), Marguerite Duras’s The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964), and Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970).
Video Room: Janaina Wagner is curated by Leandro Muniz, Assistant Curator, MASP.
Throughout 2025, the Video Room program will be part of the Histórias da ecologia [Histories of Ecology] cycle at MASP and includes exhibitions by Emilija Škarnulytė, Inuk Silis Høegh, Janaina Wagner, Maya Watanabe, Tania Ximena, and the Vídeo nas Aldeias project.