Celacanto provoca maremoto (2004-2008) was first presented in 1999 at Galeria Camargo Vilaça (São Paulo), in a reduced version with another title: Azulejões. It was for the exhibition held at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain (France) in 2005 that Adriana Varejão conceived the current format of the work that now occupies the walls of the gallery.

The artist takes as a point of departure the baroque Portuguese tile-making, where the play of shapes, volumes, and shades is recurring. For this work, the four walls are made of 184 big tiles with a crackled surface, as if they have gone through the passage of time; assembled in apparent disorder, they seem to create a major wave, a seaquake. Its title recalls some graffiti made by Carlos Alberto Teixeira in the streets of Rio de Janeiro during the 1970s that had a major repercussion at the time, taking inspiration from the Japanese series National Kid.