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and the Lebanese Youmna Chlala, who join her in a collaborative and horizontal he chose four works and three indexes or grids of digital images, representing
curatorial process. The production of these artists “reconciles intimate aspects columns of serif text and, in a separate room, a projection of a black and white
such as body and memory, as well as epic gestures such as architecture, history video with subtitles. In total, the works counted with 29 pages, plus a seven minute
and nation,” maintains Wura-Natasha. graphic text video. To Cesarco, language is the most important cultural property
The curator speaks in open and continuous dialogue: “our individual projects embrace we possess. “We live, remember, speak, think, work and dream through language.”
distinct practices and languages that converge into ideas and questions which are With views to achieve his goals, the artist develops methodologies, grammars and
crucial to experimentation, freedom and the creative process.” The work of these reading protocols, and that is because, according to him, we are used to reading
artists is affected by their individual histories and the complex relationships they about art, but not to read as art.
maintain with their lands, nations and territories. “Their works break the hegemonic Among his many works, Four Modes stands out. It was exhibited in the Museu
narratives”, the curator reveals. de Arte Moderna de Viena, composed of visual speeches related to the themes
By using all the available media, Waru-Natasha critically uses embroidery, an almost of secrecy, enigma and regret. One of them includes Methodology, previously
exclusively feminine activity, to create commentaries on contemporary Nigerian shown at the Pavilhão do Uruguai, at Venice’s Bienal in 2011: a video enlarged by
society, and thus highlights the role of women who develop a cultural critique. photographs whose whispered dialogue between a couple revolves around a letter
Impressed by the way Nigerians negotiate using little or no words, as well as by whose content viewers ignore.
how simple gestures incite actions, she tries to demonstrate in her work what is Cesarco also acts as an editor. He was responsible for books on talks between artists,
not said. Such works present complex and dreamlike scenes executed in paper, one of his characteristics being the search for clarity of concept. The curator catalogs,
which resembles cloth and reveal delicate, weightless, seemingly ethereal designs. classifies and reinterprets, which relates to thinking art as something already seen.
The multiple and circumstantial artist Wura-Natasha invents several subjects that “My work is a reformulation of historical conceptualism, but repetition does not
juxtapose themselves in the same scenario. Her works relate to reality, but are mean desire for return.” In fact, he leads the viewer to think, thus following the
linked to the desire that inhabits the world of experiences. The magnitude of her questionings proposed within his art. Using humor, he “plays” with other authors,
performances is expressed by the physicality, the endurance, the gestures of the as he did with Jean-Luc Godard in playing the script for Alphaville, outdoors in the
body and the relationship with geographical space, as well as memory and history. Queens neighborhood of New York. In 2015’s The Dreams I’ve Left Behind, time and
The magic of performance brings on ancient wisdom: the movement of the body has space are revisited as the artist prints an almost erased image on the wall behind
the power to evoke the senses with a purpose that transcends them. Wura-Natasha, his bed directly on the gallery wall. The strategy used relies upon more than merely
in some performances, highlights the relationship between body and social power, transmitting information, but it is associated to the unique way he perceives the
investigating how women, in particular, occupy spaces by means of epic or common meaning of the artwork through different narrative constructions. Performer and
actions. Her works include drawings, videos and public presentations and the most audience merge into a tense, flexible circle, through which conception becomes a
pertinent researches discuss the presence of women in the public space in Lagos. receptacle to viewers; where the possible and the likely play, not expecting solution,
One of her best-known performances, Sweep, was originally performed during her nor continuity.
first visit to Nigeria, where she would like to be remembered. This work has already
been carried out in several countries, deepening their thinking about the presence BIENNIALS SÃO PAULO | PAGES 17 AND 18
diaspora. In this quest for continued presence, Waru-Natasha takes up the rights THE INTIMATE WORLD OF
of women within these societies and exploring the notion of identity, homeland and
One of her exhibits was accompanied by a folder that reminded Angela Davis in 1985: MARY LAET AT BIENAL
of women to experience them in two different societies, such as Austin and Lagos.
“There are striking parallels between sexual violence against women and colonial CARIOCA ARTIST REFLECTS UPON THE NATURE OF TIME WITH PUNCTUAL
violence against people and nations.” The strong presence of Wura-Natasha at São SILENCES AND SHORT BREAKS
Paulo’s Bienal will certainly be inspiring, especially regarding the dark moment we
are going through, in which impunity for the murderers of Marielle, also an active BY LEONOR AMARANTE
Afro descendant, continues without a deadline for a solution, as justice has been SILENCE WOULD ALIGN. Calm listens between the cracks of the asphalt and
showing Brazilians. flattens veins with the viscous liquid that leaves the mark of a dense but delicate
BIENNIALS SÃO PAULO | PAGES 15 AND 16 graphic work. Maria Laet and her work possess a rare identity between author and
work. Both act in silence; dilated time. She is among the invited artists of the São
ALEJANDRO CESARCO: Paulo’s 33 Bienal, bringing a video that has not yet been revealed, but tantalizes
rd
THE WORD AS ART the reflection of the present and its fleeting duration, taking silence for an object
of reflection.
THE CURATOR ARTIST SHARES WITH OTHER ARTISTS HIS AESTHETIC CONCERNS Counterpoint to the monumentality of a biennial, her work is pendular in the art
system, intimate, thoughtful, unhurried. From whatever angle one looks at it, it
AT SÃO PAULO’S 33RD BIENAL conveys lightness and reveals itself as an invention of the gaze while recapturing
erasures of the city. The idea that the present is composed of the juxtaposition of
BY THE EDITOR distinct realities and disconnected layers arises in Leito (2013), in which the surface of
Language is Alejandro Cesarco’s natural tool. His work is permeated with the sidewalk or the street is camouflaged and becomes a sort of map when receiving
philosophical, literary and filmic ideas with which he constructs and deconstructs milk in its cracks, constituting a fluid channel. It takes some time to admire one work
verbal arrangements. He was invited to the 33rd edition of São Paulo’s Bienal as a of art, and another to produce a work of art. Contrary to “spectacularization”, Mary
curator of Aos Nosso Pais. The Uruguayan who lives in New York curates works by works in the stillness, and the formal transformations appear naturally, acquiring a
artists who share his conceptual and aesthetic concerns. “The exhibition proposes cumulative existential quality through a subtle cycle. Everything she produces offers
questioning about how the past, and history simultaneously, is able to both make a reflection on the nature of time.
possible and frustrate potentialities, and how that can be rewritten by the artists’ work, The body is a source of message in itself. It highlights one of her unique works.
which generates differences from repetitions,” he explains. In addition to Cesarco, The appropriation of Haroldo de Campos’ concrete poem Galáxias, written without
artists from three generations, including Sturtevant, Louise Lawler and Cameron punctuation, offers several possibilities of reading the verses that she transforms
Rowland, take part in the exhibition. “To dedicate this exposure to a biological or an into fragments. Accompanying the enclosed CD, Harold reads 16 pages of his work,
adoptive primary relation, a literal or a metaphorical one, is to construct methods, which should, according to him, be read aloud, treated as a book-song. Such pages
inhibitions, possibilities and expectations,” Cesarco asserts. compose the work of the artist, and the holes correspond to the silences that
Somehow, he maintains closeness to the conceptualism of the 1960s and 1970s, punctuate the brief pauses that Haroldo performs during his reading. Mary points
and he sometimes reverses such strategy: instead of employing linguistic forms to out that the measurement of the body as well as the breaths are also given through
reconfigure the visual experience, he makes use of visual forms in order to reconsider silences, rhythm, the sense to the text, the speech, the reading. The holes in the
literary understanding. The artist works with aesthetic questionings and investigates paper correspond to the pauses in the reading, in which reader and text breathe.
the perception of the world through language. Moreover, his research draws the They are spaces of breathing, allowing the invisible to be seen, as the limit that is
attention of young contemporary poets not limit; as the limit where an encounter takes place. The holes are where the paper
We are living a synchronic moment of aesthetic plurality. Thus, the curator uses itself breathes; where light and air pass through.
different poetics: sometimes literary, occasionally visual, and at times sonorous. What attracts the most in Maria Laet’s work is the lightness of time that permeates
What he will present for Bienal it not yet known, but some of his works, such as the both nature and man as fluidly as a mist, as if memory were diluted in thought. The
one he displayed at MoMA, are well-supplied of texts. For one of his exhibitions, seams, the cracks that suck sands, liquids that look like veins filled with some undue