Page 110 - ARTE!Brasileiros #49

IT’S ENOUGH ENGLISH VERSION
BIENNIALS SESC_VIDEOBRASIL | PAGE 22 TO 36 THE INTERNATIONALIZATION
IMAGINED COMMUNITIES, OF SESC_VIDEOBRASIL

NO NEED TO SCREAM AN INTERVIEW WITH SOLANGE FARKAS: PROJECT FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR
TO BE HEARD TALKS ABOUT DEVELOPMENTS IN RESEARCH ON AFRICA, AMERICA, THE MIDDLE
EAST AND THE CARIBBEAN
21ST EDITION OF THE SESC_VIDEOBRASIL BIENNIAL, INAUGURATED IN SESC
24 DE MAIO, HAS ITS HIGHLIGHTS IN THE DIVERSITY OF THEMES BY MARIA HIRSZMAN
BY MARIA HIRSZMAN WITH 21 EDITIONS AND 36 YEARS OF EXISTENCE, Sesc_Videobrasil is one of the most powerful
and long-lived cultural events in the country. In the current edition, which can be
THE DIVERSITY OF THEMES, poetics and approaches of the 21st edition of Sesc_Videobrasil seen until February 2020, at Sesc 24 de Maio, the show has made some important
is one of its highlights. There are no redundancies or overlaps between the more than changes in its structure. Among them are the incorporation of a theme not only for the
60 works selected for the show, which for the first time in history has a definite lead selection of works, but already announced before the artists registered their projects
even before the call. Imagined Communities a motto inspired by Benedict Anderson’s (Imagined Communities was the guiding thread adopted for the current edition); the
work, becomes a potent but nonimposing guide that has brought together a wide expansion of the curatorial team; and - perhaps the most impactful of changes - the
range of research whose main common feature may be the delicate manner in which transformation of the event into a Biennial.
they deal with often dramatic issues. The term Biennial, incorporated into the title of the event that is now called the
Destruction, threat of extermination, distorted view of the world due to racial, economic or Sesc_Videobrasil Contemporary Art Biennial, is not just periodic information or a
social prejudice are largely dealt with by the 50 artists selected by the judging committee brand hit. Taking on itself as an event of its kind inserts the now biennial into a broad
international agenda of contemporary art. It is a way of reaffirming itself as part of
and the 5 invited by the curator. And yet, a certain subtlety predominates in the show, a broad and active circuit of cultural action. Brazil already has two other important
a bet on the transformative power of art, which does not have to scream to be heard. Biennials, São Paulo and Mercosur, but the field of Videobrasil is well defined: it acts
Some examples clearly demonstrate this defense of utopia in the face of contemporary clearly against the hegemonic nuclei, bringing together artists and thinkers from
tragedy. Working prominently in the exhibition, the series of urban landscape photos Africa, America, the Middle East and Brazil. Caribbean “This is the place we have to
taken by England-based Syrian Hrair Sarkissian subtly and surprisingly deals with research, we have to investigate,” says Solange Farkas, founder and current artistic
totalitarian repressions by showing places where public executions are often made in director of the project.
various countries where punishment of death is state policy. She makes a point of stressing the importance of keeping the event always ready
Peruvian Claudia Martínez Garay explores with a mix of subtlety and sharp aim for adaptations. Sesc_Videobrasil has already resembled a movie show, has taken on
the annihilation of indigenous ancestral culture and the effects of colonization on the identity of a major festival and is now completing an important step in this slow
indigenous people. She appears in the exhibition with two works: the installation titled process of moving from the black box of the movie theater to the “white cube” of
Somos aún! , made from the sum of a series of anthropomorphic sculptures, which the exhibition space. “The first decade was to understand video production in Brazil”,
mix traces of ancient cultures with a persistent defense of popular imagination, and explains Solange. In the 1990s, there is a certain disappointment, a frustration of the
a touching video, I Survived to you, in which close-up images are seen of the shapes hope that video would occupy a more significant place in the cultural scene. “We went
of an ancient 7th-century vase of Moche civilization, famous for its pottery work, from romanticism to pragmatism, and in the face of the realization that we were not
kept at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. While getting lost in the twisting and going to occupy TV, people began to investigate and experiment more intensely with
mysterious forms of this archaeological object, the viewer hears a strange, somewhat the specifics of language”.
surreal narrative, made in the first person by the vase, narrating from its making to In the wake of this process, there was an important process of internationalization, first
its closure in a distant museum. gathering and showing in Brazil the best of the international scene and the historical
The ancient culture of its people is also the theme of Dana Awartani’s work. In a basis of video art and, subsequently, making room for a young, intense, hard-to-reach
specular relationship between video and installation, the Arabian artist makes a production from the south. geopolitical “There was a lack of knowledge, a great
critical comment about the abandonment of the millenary Hejazi architecture, ignorance about the history of the video here”, says. The result of this mapping can be
typical of her region until the beginning of an overwhelming modernization process measured in the archive of almost three thousand works gathered in the Videobrasil
that began in the 1950s. Dana covers the floor of her installation with a beautifully Association’s collection, available for consultation. “It is a broad material that allows
patterned, typically Islamic tile carpet patiently made with colored sands. The us to understand this place of critical invisibility”, she adds.
ephemerality of the composition is even more evident in the video, which shows the According to her, the strategy of assuming itself as a specialized biennial has been
artist sweeping the same formation in one of the few houses with such architecture drawing for three editions, when it brought Olafur Eliasson’s work to Brazil. Among
still in Saudi Arabia. the challenges facing the new model of the event, Solange cites the increase of
Of course the presence of the video is striking in the show, but it is by no means international and local dialogues, adding groups and issues traditionally relegated to
hegemonic. Many works combine language with other forms of expression such as the margins. “It’s no use getting self-conscious”, she concludes.
painting, photography and drawing, or simply incorporate typical video procedures
into works that do without moving image, as can be seen in works such as those
by Brazilian André Griffo, from the Malinese. Tiécoura N’Daou and Tunisian Nidal FAIR ART BASEL MIAMI | PAGE 28 TO 30
Chamekh, who travel freely through different media to develop a work of high
political resistance. In other words, the event puts us in front of a series of works ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH
that speak, in the words of artistic director Solange Farkas, “different languages
for very similar situations”. SHOWS LARGE SCALE WORKS
In terms of denunciation, the highlight of the show is the work related to the
indigenous population, taking from the invisibility the drama of those populations MAGALÍ ARRIOLA IS THE CURATOR RESPONSIBLE FOR MERIDIANS SECTOR,
increasingly threatened by violence and that have long been relegated to a position
of invisibility. Collective groups such as the Alto Amazonas Audiovisual, which WHICH WILL HOST LARGE-SCALE INSTALLATIONS, VIDEOS AND PERFORMANCES.
brings together indigenous anthropologists and filmmakers, sew and dialogue BY THE EDITORS
images captured in the region. There are also historical records such as interviews
made by filmmaker Andrea Tonacci with indigenous leaders in the late 1970s that THE MIAMI BEACH edition of the traditional Art Basel fair has begun to heat up the market
only now, in 2014, were recovered and restored. But there are still in the show, since it announced the new section Meridians in October, which will feature large-scale
and in chorus, strong warning voices about the situation of communities and works. Nara Roesler Gallery is the only Brazilian to participate in this premiere, with a
groups in search of survival and affective spaces of conviviality and struggle. This work by Artur Lescher. There are 34 works exhibited in the section, curated by Magalí
effort is epitomized by the incisive action led by Mexican Teresa Margolles, one Arriola, critic and curator, current director of the Museo Tamayo in Mexico. All works
of five artists specially invited to participate in the Biennale, which denounces can be seen during the fair, that takes place in December 5-8 at the Miami Beach
the brutal violence against transsexuals. The work, entitled Priscilla Present Convention Center. Meridians will be shown in the Grand Ballroom.
honors the stabbed transvestite a year ago in downtown São Paulo and unfolds In addition to Lescher, works by Argentine artist Luciana Lamothe, Cuban artists Flavio
into three different elements: performance action, embroidery and video. Or in Garciandía and Ana Mendieta, Colombian artist Antonio Suárez Londoño and Mexicans
the paintings by No Martins, who associates powerful portraits of black figures artists Jose Dávila, Pepe Mar, and Tercerunquinto can be seen in Meridians. The curatorship
to the phrase “It is enough!” did not follow a specific theme for the chosen works: “Given the uniqueness of each

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