Page 113 - ARTE!Brasileiros #40

Sidney Amaral (dead in January of this year, the artist will have the largest ON VIEW AT MASP through 10/1, Miguel Rio Branco: Nada Levarei
number of works exhibited, twelve in all) and Zózimo Bulbul (dead in 2013, Quando Morrer presents a selection of 61 photographs from the
the actor and filmmaker is reverenced in the show with exhibitions of his famous series Maciel, registered in 1979 in the neighborhood of
1973 short film Alma no Olho, a classic of black activism in the country). same name in Salvador. Considered a milestone in the Brazilian
To Solange Farkas, curator and director of Associação Cultural photography, the work examines ambiguities between public and
Videobrasil, and creator of the International Contemporary Art Festival private and presents the female figure as a symbol of resistance.
Sesc_Videobrasil, which, in October, reaches its tenth edition, in In 2011, the life in the studio located in Araras, in the mountains
addition to the role of showcase, Agora Somos Todxs Negrxs? aims of Rio de Janeiro, a place that since 2006 has become the home
at questioning structural conventions. “There is a huge and powerful of Miguel Rio Branco, was the topic of an article of issue 11 of
production by artists with important discourses, with a wonderful ARTE!Brasileiros, which also portrayed everyday life in the creation
symbolic production, but rarely seen and with very little insertion spaces of the artists José Bechara and Bete Jobim.
on the art scene. The show is also a place to shed light on these dark Escorted by roosters, chickens, a duo of dachshunds called Café
corners of our own culture. We must open spaces to these artists and and Cacau, and a basset called Capuccino, the artist welcomed us
put them in contact with the scene they want to be in,” she defends. at the gate’s threshold on the morning of a cloudy Sunday, which
The letter ‘x,’ used to define the non-binary gender orientation in the reduced the beautiful route to a frustrating, continuous view of
words “all” and “black” promotes, according to the curator Daniel clouds and gusts of rain.
Lima, irrecusable discussions in contemporary life. “ The ‘x’ affords Tired of the routine of big cities, the photographer, painter and
a different perspective from the Black Movement statements from multimedia artist, famous for the profusion of colors in his works,
the 1960s and 1970s. Today it is impossible to think the black issue found refuge and serenity in a bucolic, mostly green valley, which
without considering the issue of gender. It is impossible to consider culminates in the giant Maria Comprida, a rocky mountain nearly
this alliance without the idea of resistance against a patriarchal, white, 2,000-meters-high, which, as legend goes, was inhabited, at its
Europe-centered world, and without considering the female and the summit, by sacis-pererês and mulas-sem-cabeça [characters from
non-binary perspectives. So the ‘x’ is a resource to update.” the Brazilian folklore].
The exhibition’s title also alludes to the historical revolution led by While he makes coffee in the underground floor of his home
Toussaint L’Overture who, after five years of bloody conflicts, freed filled with wooden and glass structures, Rio Branco argues that
the Haitian slaves from the French empire of Napoleon Bonaparte in he has always been on the margin of conventions: “In a way, I am
1804. The following year, the republic was promulgated and the new underground in the essence. A person who works with photography,
constitution of the Caribbean country was concluded. On article 14, the painting, drawing, cinema, is also underground because the system
document determines: “Henceforth, all citizens will be called blacks.” tries to define you the entire time as only one thing.”
“This afforded the perspective of alliance inside the concept of Unlike his photographs, paintings, films and installations, which
negritude, the entire process of decolonization, the non-whites stimulate poetic subjectivities, Miguel Rio Branco is blunt, he cuts
gathered around a conceptual umbrella of negritude,” Lima explains. to the chase, as we can see in the following interview, made at the
Apparently ironic, especially if read by whites, the exhibition’s title, occasion the 2011 article was published and thus far unpublished
defends the curator, also has positive propositions: “The question mark in its entirety.
in the title may be seen as ‘yes, now we are all black,’ but also that,
in a process of exception, we have an exhibition entirely comprised ARTE!Brasileiros — Miguel, when did you move to Araras and how has this
of black artists. The idea is to contemplate this new generation, to phase been unfolding?
dialogue with the previous generations, but also to point out this idea MIGUEL RIO BRANCO – I’ve been living here since 2006. I wanted
of a unique mesh of black artists that exists today,” he concludes. to get away from the city a little, but it’s still something I have to
improve. I have to get more disconnected from the issue of cities
1 | THE DANCER AND PERFORMER LUIZ DE ABREU PRESENTS THE PERFORMATIC PIECE and stress...
“SAMBA DO CRIOULO DOIDO” (2004-2013) You’ve lived a life in constant motion. What was it like to live
in so many different places, and particularly in Brazil?
2 | OPPOSITE, O PÃO NOSSO, BY SIDNEY AMARAL (2014, BRONZE, 31 X 7,5 X 11,5 CM; 13,5 X I was born in Spain and I came to Brazil when I was three years
5 X 8, 5 CM). LEFT, ONE OF THE APPROXIMATELY 800 PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SERIES old. Shortly afterwards, we went to live in Buenos Aires, lived
ACEITA?, CONDUCTED BETWEEN 2014 AND 2017 BY THE ARTIST MOISÉS PATRÍCIO in Portugal for a while, and returned for a short time here, until
I lived in Switzerland from 10 to 14 years old. I was educated in
3 | FRAME FROM O BATEDOR DE BOLSA, BY DALTON PAULA (2011, VIDEO, 1’30”) Portugal and I returned to Brazil with a strong Portuguese accent,
for which I was mocked. I was called “Bacalhauzinho” [Little
EXHIBITION INTERVIEW | PAGES 64 TO 70 Codfish]. Then I went to Colégio Santo Inácio and things did not
work out there either. I was threatened to be sent to a boarding
MIGUEL RIO BRANCO, school in Friburgo, and I was lucky that my father was transferred
to Switzerland, where I lived a very enriching period. It was when I
“UNDERGROUND IN started painting at the Flaureamont Institute, a college in Geneva,
with drawing teachers who encouraged us a lot. It was then that
HIS ESSENCE” I prepared my first exhibition, aged 18, in 1964.
Shortly after this exhibition you left for the United States...
Yes. In New York, I also had a great time, between 1964 and 1967,
“A PERSON WHO WORKS WITH PHOTOGRAPHY, PAINTING, DRAWING, when Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones emerged, a culturally
CINEMA, IS ALSO UNDERGROUND BECAUSE THE SYSTEM TRIES TO DEFINE powerful era. I returned to Brazil in 1967, and in 1968 I enrolled
YOU THE ENTIRE TIME AS ONLY ONE THING,” THE ARTIST ARGUED IN AN for the ESDI (School of Industrial Design). I held a first exhibition
at the Galeria Relevo, but my work in painting was not so intense, I
INTERVIEW TO ARTE!BRASILEIROS IN AUGUST 2011 was more into to photography and cinema. I followed other paths,
even though later years, in the 1980s, I returned to painting.
BY MARCELO PINHEIRO PHOTO LUIZA SIGULEM Signs of maturity too, since in Geneva you were still too young...

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