Page 93 - ARTE!Brasileiros #45

BIENNIALS SÃO PAULO | PAGES 14 AND 15 so sagely and steadily in time. I insist: López’s influence is fundamental for the current
ANÍBAL LÓPEZ, generation of artists in Central America, in Guatemala. And with the right rescue, the
expansion of his work to other latitudes.
A STRANGER * Alexia Tala is a researcher and curator. Currently she’s head curator of Paiz Guatemala 2020 Art Biennial,

IN THE NEST curator of the Solo Project in SP-Arte 2019 in Brazil and artistic director of the Atacama Platform. She was
co-curator in the 8th Mercosur Biennial in 2011.

ARTIST FROM GUATEMALA, ANÍBAL LÓPEZ HAS SINGULAR BIENNIALS NAÏFS FROM BRASIL 2018 | PAGES 16 TO 19
PRESENCE AT THE 33RD SÃO PAULO BIENNIAL
A POPULAR AND
BY ALEXIA TALA VAST SOCIOLOGY

IT IS DIFFICULT TO MEASURE THE INFLUENCE of Aníbal López in the contemporary art of 14ª EDITION OF NAÏFS BIENNIAL OCCURRED IN 2018 SHOWS ARTISTIC
Guatemala. Lopez proposes interferences and investigations putting the relations of CONTRIBUTIONS TO DISCUSSIONS ON CONTEMPORARY POLITICS
politics and economy in the ethical universe. By doing so, it creates disruptions within AND SOCIETY
the art produced so far.
He robbed a person and with this money paid the cocktail of his exhibition El Préstamo, BY JAMYLE RKAIN
2000 - currently exhibited at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial, spread charcoal in the streets
before the Guatemalan Army’s birthday parade (June 30, 2001), transformed the “POPULAR YES, INGENUOUS NEVER”, this sentence by the artist Nilson Pimenta placed at
institution that exposed his work as an accomplice in smuggling activity (500 boxes of the catalog of the 14th Naïfs Biennial of Brazil shows very well the panorama of the
contraband, 2007). Among other interventions. exhibition, which was presented at Sesc Piracicaba until the last November 25th. Under
In 2014, he surprised Documenta in Kassel by bringing a hired assassin he had hired in the theme Daquilo que escapa (Which escapes), the curatorial body intended to reflect
Europe to answer questions from visitors. Among them: ‘how much do you charge to kill about what might escape their eyes during the visits to the artists’ workshops, which
a person?’, ‘How do you murder the children?’, ‘Did you develop a style to assassinate?’ were called by them as “workshop houses”. After all, it is within their houses that the
and ‘How was the bond with the police that covered you?’ naïf artists of Brazil produce their works.
Testimonio, 2014, exemplifies his impulse. The power of his work, it may be said, consists This edition of the Naïfs Biennial also shows that there are many issues that can escape
in “producing accomplices”. Thus, to bring to the plane of art the radicality of reality from who observes the work of ‘popular artists’ looking at them from the conception
itself through sophisticated strategies due to its simplicity. Lopez incriminates us, of primitivism, which reduces these artists to a label that can mean a judgment by the
envelops us and stains us in the crimes he calculates. socio-cultural context where they live. Perhaps the most latent point of this show is the
THE ANÍBAL LÓPEZ EFFECT fact that many works deal with social and political discussions, even identitarian subjects,
His reasoning for creation is to produce real facts by eliminating the plane of representation, which are often close only to academic environments and would be reproduced only by
exhibiting the paradoxical in the field of art. The paradox of its ethical fragility or the artists who have access to it.
violence of its legal immunity. The naïfs show that they are far ahead at this point, clearly indicating their positioning
The effect is often disorienting because it raises great questions: what are the boundaries in some of these issues.Who visited the exhibition was already introduced in the entry to
between good and evil as raw concepts for Latin America? This crudity is evidenced some untitled works by Arlindo de Oliveira that mention the occupation of Rio’s favelas
in the displacement that his work produces in Documenta and in the Venice Biennale. by the BOPE. Beside them, the piece entitled Não corra que eu vim buscar sua alma
Thus, the prominence received at the 33rd São Paulo Biennial, Affective Affinities, (Do not run that I came to get your soul), also by Arlindo and also alluding to the police
seems extremely relevant. Not only because the regional scene is indebted to its group, shows a strong opinion of the artist and his contribution to the discussion on
recognition, but also because of the similarity of conflicts between Guatemala, Brazil the genocide of the poor people caused by this occupation in favelas, due to the abuses
and its recent past. committed by the military police, UPPs and armed forces, which participate in the military
References such as Hannibal, for whom it was crucial to have lived in the violent and intervention in the Cidade Maravilhosa.
divided Guatemala, collaborate more than ever to think about the situation of social There are a number of works, from different artists, that refer to themes raised by feminism.
division. Between the extreme right or the radical leftists, elites and vulnerable and The most striking was made by Alex dos Santos, an artist from Jaboticabal (SP), and is
segregated groups. I see as a tribute to the curatorial resolution and, knowing the work, entitled Violência contra a Mulher (Violence Against Women), from 2018. In this piece,
I would like to point out two questions. the artist approaches a series of brutalities committed against women, from the fires of
One specific: the lack of works of the Ladino series, a group of graphic works and the Inquisition to the Maria da Penha Law, tracing a timeline. The artist Ana Zamaro is
installations in which López works around the anatomical similarities of the human present with the work Absolutas, also made this year, in which she paints several faces of
body. From the fragmentation of bodies and faces that paints without skin, it states that women, each with their own characteristics that escape a pattern. Her title says a lot about
economic, social and racial differences are on the surface. how Zamaro sees the issue of feminine aesthetics in the context of feminist discussions.
It points a crucial moment in his trajectory, previous to the actions we will see, where a Two works by Gildo Xavier bring the LGBT theme to the forefront, dealing with it through
dialogue with Santiago Sierra is recognized. This error of emphasis is also seen in the an insight into family settings. In Retratos de Famílias (Family Portraits, 2017), he paints a
museographic form in which Testimonio presents itself. series of parental nucleus of different compositions, including LGBTs, indigenous, black and
On the other hand, a general comment. At the Biennial, his work represents the largest diverse religions, contrary to a standard of what is labeled “traditional Brazilian family”.
“context coefficient”, given the country’s situation. Regarding the content of the edition, The work A Conquista (The Conquest, 2017) also comes in this aspect by showing a couple
the work by López is the only one to be involved with the problems of the environment. of women that fulfills the dream of having a child. These are just a few examples of how
He is part of the group of artists sensitized to local and global violence. Potential catalyst the contemporary discussions are present in the repertoire of Naïf artists who have
for contemporary artists of more political interest. passed through this edition of the Biennial held by Sesc, curated by Ricardo Resende,
His artistic legacy has not yet been properly valued by international art. I venture to Juliana O. Campaneli and Armando Queiroz, in addition to the educational curatorate
say that within Latin America there is no other artist who uses this type of resource of Alexandre Araujo Bispo, and that was not naive at all.

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