At the Picasso Museum, the vibrant materials of Anna Maria Maiolino

She takes possession of everything: paper, clay, plaster, wood, Indian ink, metal. And everywhere we feel the presence of her body, the pressure of her fingers on the clay or the torn paper. "I am here. Estou aqui." is the apt title of the exhibition that the Picasso Museum is dedicating to Anna Maria Maiolino as part of the Brazil-France year, the first French retrospective dedicated to the 83-year-old Brazilian, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice in 2024, who in every corner of the ground floor of the Hôtel Salé manifests her vivacity, her desire to continue to struggle with the material.

Yes, it's definitely there, it's not finished. Room after room reveals drawings, sculptures, videos, photographs, all the way to the garden where a tree hosts the round, grayish sculptures hung high up like strange fruits. A rich work, as if animated by a synchronous movement of advance and return to oneself. The shapes and lines wander through the ages (the hanging is not chronological), constantly redrawn, reinvented, kneaded, giving the impression of never being completely finished but in-finite.

Despite the simple beauty of the hanging, one could have appeared in his studio, lifted a corner of the veil on a process in progress. These clay coils, Em dois , from the series "Objeto Escultórico" (1999), have we not already seen them in these drawings found in his studio and gathered here in a total work, Storm of Ideas ? And these points of suspensi