Born in Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro

Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...

 in 1959, Lia Menna Barreto is a Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian artist currently based in Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul

Rio Grande do Sul is the southernmost state in Brazil, and the state with the fifth highest Human Development Index in the country. In this state is located the southernmost city in the country, Chuí, on the border with Uruguay. In the region of Bento Gonçalves and Caxias do Sul, the largest wine...

.

Her formal education occurred at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, where she received a Bachelor of Arts

Bachelor of Arts

A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...

 in Design

Design

Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...

 in 1985. She is most famous (or infamous, rather) for her deconstruction of childhood through the transmogrification of dolls and plastic toys. Katia Kanton, writing in Poliester Magazine, describes her work this way:

"In her strange formal operations, Lia Menna Barreto defies the sweetened way of looking at the world of children. Her radical vision engenders a relevant social commentary that is involved with and questions the oppression of the every-day experience, full of mutilations and losses and feelings of safety and danger."

Several galleries have featured solo exhibitions of Lia Menna Barreto’s work. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, the Galeria Fortes Vilaça has hosted her [ Projeto 2001 ], Origem do Afeto, and assorted other works in the last decade; in Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre is the tenth most populous municipality in Brazil, with 1,409,939 inhabitants, and the centre of Brazil's fourth largest metropolitan area . It is also the capital city of the southernmost Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian...

, her work has appeared in the Diário de uma Boneca, the Exercícios Afetivos (MARGS), the Galeria Iberê Camargo, and the Galeria Arte e Fato; and in Rio de Janeiro, the Thomas Cohn Arte Contemporânea show featured her works in 1990, 1992, and 1995.