Page 104 - ARTE!Brasileiros #47

THE POWER OF ART ENGLISH VERSION
expected to come, it plops right in the middle of the street, right in the middle of the but at the same time, flooded with all possibilities of meaning, even of no sense, open
square, in the shape of a hand in the shape of a sprig. The sertao revolver and revolver, to nothingness, willing to be nothingness.
bullets and weapons as a solution. The sertão, a space from which we always try to *Sertão: According to Lexico, by Oxford, it's an arid region of scrub in Brazil.
distance ourselves, but which is persistent in living among agents. 1 That is the opinon of Euclides da Cunha. CUNHA, Euclides. Os Sertões: campanha de Canudos. 30ª
The sertão landscape without figures. Sertão, desert, desertão. To be deserted, ed. Rio de Janeiro: Francisco Alves, 1981.
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to be faceless, to be sand and wind. Be swirl, diabolical, be divided and conflicted. Be 2 That is how Raimundo Carrero describes the time in sertão. CARRERO, Raimundo. Romance do
dispersed, be profuse and proliferate. The sertão being is baroque, folded, pleated, bordado e da pantera negra. São Paulo: Iluminuras, 2014.
3 Sertao is armorial, full of coats of arms, symbols and signs in the work of Ariano Suassuna.
chamalotado, pintalgado, to be complex and in profusion. The sertao is a spotted jaguar, SUASSUNA, Ariano. Romance da Pedra do Reino e o Príncipe do Sangue do Vai-e-Volta. Rio de
it is a gray jaguar, it confuses the eyes of any Christian. The sertão is a mirage, it is an Janeiro: José Olympio, 1972.
illusory and delirious image. The backwood hurts in the eyes. Plethora of light, red, 4 In the voice and music by Luiz Gonzaga. Légua tirana (Luiz Gonzaga e Humberto Teixeira), 1949
gray. Sertão where the green is smeared, and the dry is sina. Sertão painting all of (RCA Victor).
yellow, ocher, dust that flutters in the summer rack. Sertao of men and red mountains 5 That is the sertão of Jorge Amado. AMADO, Jorge. Tocaia grande: a face obscura. São Paulo:
like fire. The sertão is an aesthetic of the poor, of the little, of the less, of the dirty, Record, 1984.
of the ugly, of the minimum, of the mirrado, of the skeletal, of the dry, of the gray, 6 The sertão of João Cabral de Melo Neto. MELO NETO, João Cabral de. Paisagem com figuras. In:
of the caatinga, of death and of severe lives. sertão is the poetry of the stone, it is Poesias Completas (1940-1965). Rio de Janeiro: Sabiá, 1968, p. 245-272.
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the melancholy of loss. It is the aesthetics of hunger, violence, despair, lamentation, 7 Reference to MELO NETO, João Cabral de. Morte e Vida Severina. In: Op. Cit., p. 203-244.
lamentation, medal, medallion, meganha, harlot, colonel, and jagungo. The sertao of 8 Reference to ROCHA, Glauber. Eztetyka da Fome (1965). http://www.tempoglauber.com.br/t_es-
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the goat marked for death and the Antones of the deaths , of the cangaceiro and of tetica.html. Acesso em 30 de maio de 2019.
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9 Reference to the documentary by Eduardo Coutinho, Cabra Marcado para Morrer, 1984.
the blessed, of the godfather and of the patron saint. The sertao of the male goat and
10 Reference to the characters by Glauber Rocha, Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (1964) e O Dragão
the working men. The sertao is only bone, it does not require grandiloquent rhetoric, da Maldade contra o Santo Guerreiro (1969).
but gnawed words, ruminated words, painful as stones between teeth. The backwood 11 ROSA, Guimarães. Grande Sertão: veredas. 15ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1982.
dries out any verbose outpouring. But why do we continue to gnaw at the bones of 12 Reference to AMADO, Jorge. Terras do sem fim. São Paulo: Record, 1981.
the hinterland without ever being able to catch the taste of it? Why was there so
much drool spilled from salivation around the sertão? Is the sertão a pleasure or not? *Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Júnior é holds a PhD in History from the State University of
The sertão are homesick. The sertão is an absence, in time and space. The sertao is Campinas, he is a visiting professor at the State University of Paraíba. He wrote A invenção do
departure and desire back. The sertão is soon and never again. The backwood is a Nordeste e outras Artes (Cortez, 1999).
pain, it is a pungent tear. The sertão are sounds, they are smells, they are lost flavors
and rediscovered, reenchanted, recounted, demure, redone, withdrawn, exiled. The INTERVIEW JÚLIA REBOUÇAS | PAGES 78 TO 82
the memories. The sertão is a skin that one must painfully undress. The sertão is a A “SERTÃO ART” OF
sertao enters by all the senses, stirs those more affectionate to the reminiscences,
gesture, the sertão is a way, the sertão is a trick, the sertão is a verb, the sertão is EXPERIMENTATION
a saying and done. The sertao enters through all the holes of the head and of the
body. The sertao leaves us softly when we least notice. The sertao unlocks, detaches, AND RESISTANCE
exonerates and denies itself in the folds of our body. The sertão is an old clothes that
no longer serves, but is adornment and delight for our literary and musical pearls. INTITLED SERTÃO, 36º PANORAMA OF BRAZILIAN ART, AT MAM, RAISES
The sertão is bad for life, but it is good to revive in screens and pedestals, in speeches CURRENT POLITICAL ISSUES THROUGH THE WORK OF 29 ARTISTS, MOSTLY
and contests. The sertão is a warehouse of senses, a cauldron of signs, a file of scenes YOUNG PEOPLE WHO WORK OUTSIDE THE INSTITUTIONAL AND MARKETING
and characters, a chest of artistic and intellectual happiness. The sertão is an absence ARTISTIC CIRCUIT
that makes itself a permanent and pressing presence.
The sertão is our reserve of imagination, because it is this other, this outside, that BY MARCOS GRINSPUM FERRAZ
distant one, in time and space; for being this stranger, this stranger; for being this
desert; because it is this devastated and open space where everything can be built, WHAT WOULD BE A “SERTÃO ART”? In the perspective proposed by the curator Júlia
everything to be architected, everything figured; for it is this travel space, of visions Rebouças for the 36th Panorama of Brazilian Art, the concept refers more to a way
and nomadisms; because it is this land that is deterritorialized, that can be taken of thinking and acting than to the geographic and cultural place that we usually
anywhere, because it travels within each one that is said and thought sertanejo. The associate with the word “sertão”. The public who visit the Museum of Modern Art of
sertão agent takes in the bag, takes in the speech, takes in the soul, washes of tears São Paulo between August 17 and November 15, therefore, will not find a show about
in each work that, from it, is written, it is created, it is composed, it is painted, it is the Brazilian semi-arid or with artists born in it, but rather an exhibition that has
portrayed, it is formatted, it is contracted and it is mistreated . The sertão continues “experimentation and resistance” as some of its pillars.
to function in Brazilian culture as this great question, as this great question, this It is, according to Rebouças, “a way of thinking that understands a context and
momentous question, as this enormous anguish around the being, that one day led Rosa tries to relate to it; which creates solutions from what is available; which does not
to persecute the sertão being or being in the sertão by roads and sidewalks without yield, for example, to the pressures of a hegemonic system, but which will try to
end. If the wilderness is the lands of the endless, 12 this inquiry will never cease, it find fissures in the classical flows of power”. The curator also refers to an artistic
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will be infinite and infinite like it. From time to time we may look back and invent what production that “has speculated not only on alternative circuits, but also on other
has been said about it, but this will only reopen the hunger and thirst to say it, it will materialities, other authorship relations and collaborations with different disciplines
only feed the lack of meaning, it will only encourage the continuous digging of that and fields of knowledge”.
hollow of times and spaces that are the sertões: plurals, diverse, immense, that hollow It was from this idea of “sertão art” that Rebouças selected the 29 participants from
of the senses in which in each one is abism when it is leaning on the edges of the the different regions of the country, most of them born between the 1980s and 1990s.
sertão and trying to look it in the eyes and the face. The sertao always escapes and, “A generation that has not yet had a great institutional show to their work or have had
therefore, the search never stops. The sertão is like human life, devoid of meanings, little room to make their debate happens”, she says, raising current issues about, for

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