Vivian Suter's 'Disco' at MAAT: 500 Works from Guatemalan Forest Studio

The MAAT museum in Lisbon presents 'Disco', a major exhibition of Vivian Suter featuring 500 works, 163 of which are previously unseen. The Argentine-born artist (1949) lives and works in a former coffee plantation in Panajachel, Guatemala, on the shores of Lake Atitlán. Her abstract paintings incorporate rain, soil, humidity, and paw prints from her dogs Tintin, Nina, and Disco. The show is curated by Sérgio Mah, who discovered Suter at Documenta 14 in 2017. Works are untitled and undated, created over the last decade. Display methods vary: piled on the floor, suspended on grids, hung on walls, or moving with air currents. The exhibition highlights Suter's collaborative process with nature, a practice that evolved after two storms in 2005 and 2010 damaged her studio, leading her to embrace decay and chance. Suter moved to Guatemala in 1982 after visiting Maya archaeological sites in Mexico, Yucatan, and Guatemala. She studied painting in Basel, Switzerland, where her family relocated when she was 12 during Perón's regime. Her mother, Elisabeth Wild, was also an artist. The exhibition will travel to Palais de Tokyo in Paris as part of a collaboration between the two institutions.