Throughout her career, Valeska Soares has described the complexities of a Brazilian identity whose fluidity can be uncomfortable: Feeling insufficiently Brazilian in her native country, while experiencing a foreigner’s alienation abroad, she occupies a space as a citizen of the world that can feel both cosmopolitan and adrift. This duality between global and individual frequently emerges in her work via a focus on the body, often initially concealed behind refined conceptualist strategies. Soares’s collage series Sugar Blues, begun in 2013, exemplifies this combination of vulnerable human emotions with rigorous formal composition.

In Sugar Blues XIV (2020), Soares stacks empty candy boxes to suggest modular Neo-constructivist Brazilian sculpture. Utilizing tools of minimalism and conceptualism, Soares evokes feelings of longing and memory associated with her own past indulgences of varied candies. Each brightly colored box recalls the sensory experience of unwrapping, tasting, and smelling the treats they once contained. Every piece in the Sugar Blues series can only be made when more candy has been eaten, thus making the work a sort of intimate diary that tracks both the passage of time and consumption.