Page 118 - ARTE!Brasileiros #49

IT’S ENOUGH ENGLISH VERSION
What caught your attention most when looking at this set? something for which there is no p recision of dates. Geiger produces an installation
On this occasion, what caught my attention was the repeated use of the word. I saw combining ephemeral constructions - made of sand, dry cement, earth - and
in the works presented a common thread: the word. prefabricated objects - such as a small replica of a Bauhaus house, a small train and
Used sporadically throughout history in paintings and tapestries, the word was pieces of glass that form a small pool. There is also a video built in conversation with
incorporated into the fine arts more steadily in the early 20th century, from the Philip Glass’s Akhnaten opera.
modernist avant-garde. Marcel Duchamp was deep in this idea and used the term The first installation of the work was performed as part of the Breathing Project (2006),
“differentiated simultaneities” to define the articulation between the verbal and at the Eva Klabin Foundation Museum, Rio de Janeiro, curated by Marcio Doctors. The
visual fields. One of the artists best known for this imbrication is Leonilson, whose choice of materials makes the work gain, with each assembly, unique characteristics.
work belongs to this ethos. This idea gave the name to the exhibition: Simultaneity Among the specifics of the Istanbul mount are the white sand roads, inspired by the
- the art with the word. area views during the wake of Brazil to Turkey: “I noticed these roads in the middle
of the desert. This road layout I had not done in any of the previous installations”,
Can we name some of its main features? says Anna Bella Geiger.
Some are more conceptual and others more visceral. Poetic elaborations from maps, architectures and spatialities are striking in Anna
Francisco de Almeida has a special room. His work as a woodcutter is highly regarded. Bella Geiger’s artistic practice. In Circa these discussions take the form of a fantastic /
Son of a goldsmith father, embroidering mother and grandson of a lace-up grandmother, ghostly city with temporal-spatial configurations detached from linear periodizations.
he grew up in an environment that founded his imaginary universe. Allegories, religion, For researcher and artist Ana Hortides - who has done a series of montages of the
a fantastic world, built by sometimes real figures: the beatos, the sertanejo man and work, including the Istanbul Biennale - “Circa presents a kind of city that mixes, at first
the caatinga; sometimes for figures from the religious or magical world, such as glance, different cultures and temporal spaces in ruins, or apparently , close to collapse ”.
saints and angels. The fragility of matter and the crumbling architectural constructions bring a sense
Attended university, participated in exhibitions in Fortaleza, traveled a lot, participated of destruction, of territory being devastated. Geiger recalls that Circa’s first building
in the Panorama of Brazilian Art of MAM, in São Paulo, in 2005; the Valencia Biennial was shrouded in the imagery of the Occupation of Iraq - which had been going on for
in 2007 and the VII Mercosur Biennial in Porto Alegre in 2009. In the words of the three years - thickening through words the feelings of devastation wrought by the
critic Pedro Costa: “The deal with mothers; its endless effects of engraving, inking installation’s forms and materials.
and printing; its permanent reuse and arrangements will make Francisco de Almeida The senses of the work expand in the situation of the Istanbul Biennale, curated by
a researcher-craftsman, a recorder par excellence”. Nicolas Bourriaud, entitled The Seventh Continent. The term refers to a floating area in
But I would like to highlight several of the artists I chose who were the result of this the Pacific Ocean of three million four hundred thousand square kilometers composed
dive. Henrique Viudez, a young artist, with a work of this kind that I call “more visceral”, of seven million tons of plastic.
works with painting, truck canvas and its interferences. It is more figurative and broadens The impacts of human action on catastrophic dimensions in the framework of the
research on beliefs, myths and religiosity. It also works gender issues and binary Anthropocene - concept by researchers Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer to call the
conventions male, female, with great quality of execution. It has a more allegorical work. geological age the effect of human activity on the globe - or the Capitalocene - as proposed
On the other hand, there is a very young artist, Iago Barreto, who works with the by Andreas Malm, are underway at the Istanbul Biennale. politically these contemporary
Tapebas Indians, a native indigenous society gathered in the village of Nossa Senhora issues. The wars motivated by economic interests interspersed with religious problems,
dos Prazeres de Caucaia, and which originated the municipality of the same name, the impacts on basic resource infrastructures and the lifestyles of various regions of the
in the city of Fortaleza. He is fully involved in this truly dedicated culture. He lives planet make up the contemporary world. Circa brings this dimension.
with the community, and in an authentic, non-marketer way as some artists end up The work was assembled in the projected building Emre Arolat which from 2020 will
adopting. He uses the language of the body work of the Indians at the intersection house the Istanbul Museum of Painting and Sculpture. There is also screened, among
with photography, brings the Indian to the present, in his own space, but attentive to other works, the video O Peixe (2016) by Alagoas Jonathas de Andrade. Entering the
contemporary issues. building is impossible to disregard the views from the numerous windows. Of the vast
Then you have an artist like Rian Fontenele, more consolidated, with a larger work, and majority of them what can be seen abroad are workers, scaffolding and unfinished
who, however, does not have the visibility that, in my opinion, should have. structures. A construction site is formed in the midst of the waters of the Bosphorus,
Therefore, I also tried to show works of various aspects. Haroldo Saboia, for example, buildings and mosques, which make up the landscape of the region, which is undergoing
made a video showing cities in the interior of Ceará whose names are Desert, Pleasures, a major redevelopment project.
Mirages and Passages. Architect and artist Laura Nakel says that “the transformation of former Warehouse

Diego de Santos presents burned shells, small sculptures, bringing the idea of real No. 5 on the edge of the Karaköy region into a museum shares features with recent
estate speculation, where the advance burns the houses and the residents leave their major developments such as Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires, Wonder Harbor in Rio
“shell houses” leaving everything behind. de Janeiro and V&A Waterfront in Cape Town ”.
Bia de Paula too, with Every son is a motherfucker. When he began his work, he wanted Circa’s production in this place has the effect of questioning the relations between
to do something about his parents’ absence from home, but as he interviewed the the outside and the Museum. The ruined city of Geiger makes one think of Istanbul’s
women, he realized that this was not an issue for them. On the other hand, he found buildings and vice versa. As Geiger recalls, the work deals with “questions concerning
another, much richer story, the potency of these women, who had left it behind and spirituality, memory, history, and stories in a dimension of an extended space-time.” In
faced life with their own strength. It has wonderful photos and testimonials. the city of Istanbul all these questions resurface in the very structuring of urban space,
I liked a lot of people. The Virginia Pinho that did the work on Maracanaú, where there sometimes in catastrophic dimensions. Nakel recalls that in the Museum region there
was that necrosario who was later extinct, but who lived still there. People have bonded is “a process that begins in the 1990s, in which galleries and art collectives occupy
with that region and do not leave that place, which was a prison for them. the old abandoned warehouses, initiating a process of gentrification in the region,
All the works were already existing, there was no commissioned work. Just Nivardo intensified with the arrival of large private investors”.
Victoriano, who had a smaller photo production, and then we made a suggestion to In the crossing between continents, however, Circa’s buildings gain another layer of
enlarge the photos. He works with pain. possibility: hopeful transformation. For Hortides “the inclusion of a wet, living and
What strikes me is that the production of Ceará is very poetic. All works have a concern seemingly fertile land makes the passage of time at the Istanbul Biennale assembly a
to question the problems, the environment, the status quo, but with an unexpected little more hopeful for things to come, a harbinger of construction and transformation,
poetic footprint for me. They have stories, twine, embroidery. despite disasters”. Anna Bella Geiger with her crosses through uncertain times makes
When I showed the works, they commented to me: “Wow, how it looks like Leonilson”. one imagine multiple and agonistic spaces, elaborating a vibrant and alive poetics.
And I said, “No. It’s just that Leonilson belongs to this place”.
PRIZE MARCANTÔNIO VILAÇA | PAGE 80 TO 83
PRIZE MARCANTÔNIO VILAÇA HOMENAGEM | PAGE 76 TO 78
ANNA BELLA GEIGER’S ALINE MOTTA AND THE
CROSSINGS PERSONAL DIVING INTO
COLLECTIVE MEMORY
ARTIST HONORED BY MARCANTONIO VILAÇA PRIZE, IN SEPTEMBER 2019,
SHOWED CIRCA AT THE 16TH ISTANBUL BIENNALE THE MULTIMEDIA ARTIST, ONE OF THE WINNERS OF THE 7TH MARCANTONIO
VILAÇA AWARD, DEPARTS FROM A THOROUGH RESEARCH ON HIS FAMILY
BY GABRIELA DE LAURENTII
HISTORY TO ADDRESS MAJOR TOPICS SUCH AS SLAVERY, AFRICAN HERITAGE
“EVERYONE KNOWS WHICH CITIES WERE MADE TO BE DESTROYED.” These words stuck in my AND A PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURE THAT REMAINS IN BRAZIL TODAY
thoughts about the Circa work, edited by artist Anna Bella Geiger at the 16th Istanbul
Biennial. The installation brings semantic and poetic meanings of an uncertain time, BY MARCOS GRINSPUM FERRAZ

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