Like Delfina Bernal, Silvia Gruner and Lygia Pape,[2] such connections between the land and the body is as revealing conceptual and aesthetic actions of a representative, cultural, and ritual nature.
During the 1970s, Barcellos taught printmaking at Universidade Feevale, in Novo Hamburgo and began to incorporate photography in her work.
[5] Since the 1980s Barcellos's production has included multimedia installations, manipulated photography, computerized images, objects, videos, and animation.
Her work has been included in group exhibitions in Latin America, Europe, South Korea, Japan, the United States, and Australia.
In 2003, she established the Vera Chaves Barcellos Foundation which owns more than 1,500 works by Brazilian and other artists in Porto Alegre, dedicated to the preservation and promotion of contemporary art.
"[8] The work is intended to show a problem of documentation, to suggest terrestrial landscapes, and revoke a questioning of limits of what is and is not.
Art critic and curator Icleia Borsa Cattani says that "These were a question of a selection of elements which allowed an ambiguous reading: that which is intrinsically ours (our body) viewed as something exterior to us (a landscape).
[10] Also, she refers the continuity regarding the procedures from previous works, which means that a photographic image comprised its origin as “totally circumstantial”.
In Enigmas, photographs of great primates from the Barcelona Zoo are located in the middle, and it is shown as manipulated, enlarged, photocopied object and form the three main images in the exhibition.
[12] It suggests multiple interpretations and metaphors about blindness, presented through the visual arts, literature, and a lectures cycle.
"[13] "Per Gli Ucelli", 2010 Barcellos said about this work, "I think the installation for Octógono, in a certain way, is divided into three parts: Two of them are in the platform, where we have two aspects – the ancient craftsmanship of manipulating glasses, and the postmodern technology of light circuits mechatronic commands.
Many materials are used, for example, fragmented photocopies of photographs of ornaments, bits of marble plates, a large white cotton cloth which covers the entire surface of the room.
[19] According to Barcellos, this exhibition could also be classified as an installation which is made of images, fossils, skin pieces and salt boxes.
She managed the influential exhibition space Espaço N.O with eight female artists, and promoted alternative formats, such as mail art, performance, dance-theater, and installation.