Page 114 - ARTE!Brasileiros #49

IT’S ENOUGH ENGLISH VERSION
narratives of art history. An example of this is the case of Jackson Pollock, who for decades THE EXHIBITION Love and Ethnology: The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (according
stayed in the room next to Monet’s, equating these two artists as the pinnacle of art to Hubert Fichte) was held in honor of the German author’s series of 19 books that
history and forcing a partial reading by projecting an American artist into world art history. together form a significant body of work on his travel experiences, wrapped between
If the “new MoMA” is grounded in the first idea of ts foundation - less formalist, sex and spirituality. The importance of his narrative lies, beyond the documentary and
i
perhaps - it now leaves, on the other hand, gaps between works confronted with each prose character, in the autobiographical force. The project was supported by Goethe
other, leaving the possibility of systematically comparing what was produced before and Institute and takes place after previous editions in Lisbon, Salvador, Rio de Janeiro,
after. At the same time, MoMA now enables a freer experience by making and allowing Santiago and Dakar. In Berlin, the project is curated by Diedrich Diederichsen and
new connections to work from the collection in constant dialogue with new works. Anselm Franke, who mixed works exhibited in previous exhibitions with new additions.
In its new rearrangement, the museum places photographs on the same level as Hubert Fichte (1935 - 1986) lived radically at a crucial time in recent German history. Son
paintings allowing the collection to be viewed in a different way. What was once always of Jewish father, as a child had to hide in a bomb shelter to escape the Nazi threat. He has
shown in isolated or underground cores now mixes with paintings, drawings, prints been to Brazil three times, between 1969 and 1972, having experienced African-Brazilian
and performances. There are movies running everywhere, even in the galleries that spiritual practices during this period, as well as many homosexual relations, even living with
still hold the “masterpieces” of modernism. a woman, the photographer Leonore Mau. It is in this context that he begins to constitute
It is still possible to contemplate a single work in some galleries, but with its new his History of Sensitivity, based on travel as an investigative method, when experiences
configuration the museum opens radically for live rehearsals within Marie-Josée and and impressions are key to a thorough knowledge of other cultures. Fichte was a fringe
Henry Kravis Studio, where there is always something unexpected happening from as being gay was still a crime in Germany in the 1960s. But when traveling to countries
time to time. It is a new space dedicated to performance and new moving image with dictatorial regimes in the 70s, such as Brazil, Portugal and Chile, he realizes the real
experiences, fundamental to inserting the MoMA collection in a current historical antagonist of his History of Sensitivity: torture and neglect of human rights.
perspective through new projects and emerging artists. For the exhibition in Berlin, more than 170 works were densely grouped, including
Although the presentation still has a chronological tone, it brings ambiguities, painters such as André Pierre (Port-Au-Prince) and Canute Caliste (Trinidad) and Harlem
anachronisms and some surprises. Galleries now speak of ideas and eras and no longer Renaissance artists such as Camille Billops, Owen Dodson & James Van Der Zee to
in categories and vanguards. The conceptual issue is the new thread, inaugurating a German contemporary media artists such as Michael Buthe. There are also a good
more permeable museum that is more in line with today’s world. number of Brazilian artists in the exhibition: Virginia de Medeiros, Ayrson Heráclito,
This can raise two questions: the very transformation of art historiography about Miguel Rio Branco, Alair Gomes and the Bonobando group, all exhibited in a cluster,
how its methodologies and theories are thought; and artistic training, since the vast with works by American artists such as Alvin Baltropp and Tione Nekkia McClodden.
majority of people who access a museum today have no history of art and are there These two parts are permeated by both interviews and publications by Fichte and other
for an experience that transcends any nomenclature or fact sheet. So how to deal with writers in partnership with photographers such as Pierre Verger and his companion
this new approach to the public within a museum? How to access this new dispersed Leonore Mau. Another session is devoted to Fichte’s literary influences, with books
human being with the whole world at the click of a mouse? by Jean Genet, Isabelle Eberhardt, James Baldwin, Pier Paolo Pasolini and William S.
Today’s audience divides their attention between the works on the walls and their Burroughs, literary script that constitutes a queer genealogy.

phones. Today the world presents itself through images, the idea of contemplation The opening of the exhibition featured the performance Black Garden / Omindarewa
has changed radically since the emergence of smartphones. The keys are different, (2017) of the Bonobando group, presented by Lívia Laso, Vanessa Rocha and Adriana
almost everyone is familiar with the works that are in the museum even before the Schneider. In it, a black woman creates a narrative from the point of view of Casa das
experience of being before them; the works in the museum are also reproduced outside Minas in São Luís do Maranhão, about the clash between religions and cultures, while
the museum, simultaneously in cell phones, computers, magazines and newspapers. handling a puppet of a white man. The work subverts the Eurocentric dynamic that

In addition to critical texts that reinforce the idea of the work giving us other access imposes itself on other cultural aspects, especially African-American ones.
keys. When we finally have the actual experience, it is like a déjà vu, that strange Tione Nekkia McClodden exhibits the work an Offering | six years | a conjecture (2017),
feeling of having experienced it before. There are several mediators in the relations about performing a personal ritual for Shango, interspersed with a video highlighting
between the imaginary museum and the royal museum. the misperception of the masses of African-American religions.
The MoMA collection has over 200,000 pieces and now also offers digital browsing and Love and sex, recurring themes in Fichte, are portrayed softly in the exhibition. The
searching, making it possible to access images of about 81,000 works online. Even this photos by Alair Gomes, Alvin Baltrop, and Isaac Julien make explicit the sensuality
new audience that is already conditioned to see everything online may notice cross-cuts and the proscribed desire, but in these three cases the selected photos always keep a
in the associations of images displayed in both the museum and the museum’s website. distance between camera and object of appreciation and do not allude to an intimate
In a contemporary logic dictated by algorithms, the new MoMA has also changed study when considering the name of the exhibition.
its logic to review the art of the last century. Today it is impossible to look at a job The only works that portray sex closely are Nada Levarei Quando Morrer (1980/1985),
ignoring the reality in its surroundings. All social, identity, color, and gender agendas by Miguel Rio Branco and Peep Show I-III (2017) also by Bonobando, which chronicles
are also inevitably connected with these works that can now be read and re-signified the sexual adventures of Jäcki (biographical character of Fichte) in Brazil with film
on the way back to the past. images accessed through rubber holes. Amid the large number of works, the only
From this, the institution begins to replace the idea of “masterpiece” with a more ones that make direct mention of the social complexity common to the points of the
permeable narrative type, providing more democratic readings, where each can globe mentioned in the exhibition besides Rio Branco’s is Ayrson Heráclito’s Baia de
enter their own keys in the works presented, although the entry costs $ 25, except Todas das Santas (2017). While Rio Branco displays the scarred bodies of Pelourinho,
on Fridays between 5:30 pm and 9:00 pm when tickets are sponsored by a company. Heráclito brings the sinister streets of beautiful Bahia at night.
A new narrative about modern art is emerging with associations of seemingly unlikely Love and Ethnology: The History of Sensitivity uses the body of work written by the
works. For decades MoMA curators have associated Picasso’s works with cubist cores, German writer and criticizes the European view of underrepresented cultures with an
such as Georges Braque, or surrealists in one room and geometric abstraction in another interesting effort of shared curatorships. However, the exhibition does not investigate
room. Now the strategy is to conceptually use some work and from it to group in the same so much the term “ethnology” beyond the religious cultural meaning, which is also
gallery works of different categories confronted in the same space. This was unthinkable dissociated from its current context, in which spiritual practices are often pursued.
until a few decades ago, as it breaks with the (hegemonic) narrative invented by the Even presenting a significant set of works, the project lacks the meaning which was experienced
museum itself and further enhances the contemporary dispersion packed by the public by Fichte in his various trips and is inseparable from both the development of black culture
that springs from this network logic. This contributes to the formation of future generations and queer culture. The exhibition does not take advantage of his honorees’ experiences to
within a dynamic that refuses to accept only one version of the story. delve into the chosen topics and leaves us an impression that the world has been simplified.
MoMA is less in a cast, seems to be trying to get rid of the modernist issues that still haunt
the entire art system. Thus it also seems to want to redeem itself from an authoritarian
narrative that in the past used art as a political weapon of dispute for global hegemony. EXHIBITIONS SÃO PAULO | PAGE 50 TO 54
INTERNATIONAL BERLIN | PAGE 46 TO 48 VIEWING AND INTER-
BERLIN REDUCES RADICALISM VIEWING CILDO MEIRELES

OF HUBERT FICHTE CARIOCA ARTIST’S EXTENSIVE “POETIC AND HISTORICAL ANTHOLOGY”
OCCUPIES SESC POMPEIA, IN SÃO PAULO, WITH ABOUT 150 WORKS THAT
IN AN AMBITIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIC PROJECT, HAUS DER KULTUREN DER WELT DEFY THE SENSES, INVITE INTERACTION AND POINT TO THE PERMANENCE OF
DOES NOT TREAT SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALITY WITH THE SAME VIGOR AS VIOLENCE EXPERIENCED IN BRAZIL SINCE THE COLONIAL AND THE MILITARY
THE GERMAN AUTHOR’S NARRATIVES.
DICTATORSHIP PERIOD TO THIS DAY
BY DERECK MAROUÇO, IN BERLIN BY MARCOS GRINSPUM FERRAZ

Book_ARTEBrasileiros_49.indb 114 14/11/19 01:00