Throughout her career, Brazilian artist Sandra Cinto has developed a rich vocabulary of symbols and lines to create lyrical landscapes that swirl between fantasy and reality. Using drawing as her point of departure, Cinto evokes mesmerizing environments including turbulent seascapes, swirling rainstorms and celestial skies. For inspiration she draws upon Japanese ukiyo-e prints and Hokusai’s iconic The Great Wave off Kanagawa, as well as European Romanticism and dramatic scenes such as Théodore Géricault’s 1818 painting The Raft of the Medusa, which depicts a famous sea disaster.

Cinto also engages with her surrounding architecture on a frequent basis, immersing the viewer in a sea of waves to evoke the illusion of a weightless, spiraling universe. In so doing, she evokes stories of human hardship and redemption, as well as a larger metaphor for the human odyssey and our relationship with the environment.

At the CAC, she will summon these adventures for a new installation that spans the Lobby and Lobby Lounge. More specifically, an epic landscape will unfold across the two major columns in the Lobby – turning static pillars into dynamic portals for the eye and imagination to explore.