Page 120 - ARTE!Brasileiros #49

IT’S ENOUGH ENGLISH VERSION
choose these characters and how do they fit into the work?
Could they ever get you into church? They are icons, right? They are like totems. For example, Silvio Santos, his life, his
No. In fact I was very curious about that neopentecostal universe that I didn’t know career, is like a São Paulo totem. It is the embodiment of the myth of meritocracy. And
well. It was one of the engines of my work, trying to understand that overwhelming working in photoshop I saw that he and João Doria have very similar traits. So at work
faith and at the same time with a very strong, colorful aesthetic. It was engaging. they come together as one. They complement each other. Because Doria is also like a
caricature, an archetype of the heir, of savage capitalism. You see these figures and you
It seems to me that many of your life experiences are very present in your work. already know what they are about, they already bring a whole universe together. And
You have talked about another part of the family that comes from a decaying they are not abstract phenomena. These are people who are acting there, an army. Of
aristocracy, besides their formation in Europe... course there are many others, it is much more complex than that.
Yes, I think it was an engine. They lived in Europe, in a context where everyone was
relatively mixed, and from time to time frequented family in Brazil, they were a deeply You once said that your work seeks to deal with the complexity of apocalypse. You
racist people, very futile, but with a certain cultured veneer, an obsession for power, also said that the whole work is about war on different levels. Anyway, are we in the
hierarchy and status and the certainty of knowing that everything and everyone is apocalypse? Are we into war?
in their place. I wanted to understand what were the mechanisms of perpetuation of There is this perception that there is an apocalypse, at all levels, in the matter of
this caste that continued to live in colonial Brazil without being disturbed. And also of natural resources for example. And the work tries to see these details, as this is a
this evangelical world. They are worlds within themselves, with answers to everything. construction, it is a war that comes from far away. In Brasilia’s work, for example, I
I began to dig, to dig, and it began to appear as a bottomless hole with very old and saw these cycles, as in the inauguration of Brasília reenacted the first mass of Brazil,
deep roots, complex and perverse logic of domination. The work is all about unraveling of the time of the conquest. It is an apocalypse that has been preparing for many
these structures, which because they are so old and familiar form like an ecosystem, centuries, but now it is as if it were the apotheotic moment, which came in earnest.
a given, timeless thing. And see the role of media, family, genealogy, inheritance, And working on it, messing with these things is sometimes scary. It became clearer
symbolic capital in this maintenance. The SuperRio, the second chapter of the Atlas, throughout the chapters, having its apex in Brasilia, where the research was done at
is a more direct portrayal of this attempt to understand what was around me and the time of the 2018 elections. It seems that the slaveholders got the perfect formula.
its relationship to more global marketing phenomena, corporate logic, and how it The combination of the power of faith with emotional marketing and information
influences people’s minds and actions, what are their strategies and how does this technology is overwhelming.
translate to all scales, from individual to geopolitical. Then I explored other adjacent At the same time as we have this apocalyptic framework, the artistic milieu has given
phenomena. So it began, in trying to understand these universes and the relations recognition to works that deal with racial, indigenous, gender, and so on.
between them, and I still work on these issues.
You just won Pipa, for example. Is it a resistance to the apocalypse?
And how do these Superfictions, these chapters, relate to each other in this I think maybe the art world has awakened more now too because things started to
great World Atlas? reach a “whiteness” that was quiet, protected, trapped in a romanticism. But there are
In the beginning each project had its independence, explored its own themes. Only later people who were already used to persecution, who have wisdom about being at war.
I understood this as an Atlas. These are chapters that relate, with issues that go through And I think the arts may now turn more to these, the ones who already know what
the whole work, such as the ideas of empire and galaxy, the war between civilizations it’s about. When there is a need, everything is learned faster.
in their different social, religious, economic, symbolic and aesthetic facets, the different
strategies of whitening the population. In the first chapter in Brussels, it was a more ARTIST MARCELA CANTUÁRIA | PAGE 90 TO 93
strictly analytical thing. It is a very poor city and dirty by European standards, but
I was studying architecture, I began to realize a very warlike discourse, conquering MARCELA CANTUÁRIA:
with an attempt to build itself as a world city scenario, capital of Europe. And when
superfiction really came in the next work in Rio, which I wrote in 2005 and resumed in GIVE TO WHOM IT HURTS

minds and space. This idea runs through all the work in different ways. And the idea of
2013, in the pre-World Cup and Olympics period, the apex of Rio’s superfiction. Many
times in my videos, I start from tourist films, advertisements, which is how the city ARTIST PRESENTS LA LARGA NOCHE DE LOS 500 AÑOS EXHIBITION UNTIL
wants to sell itself, what fiction it will create to export, this image creation. DECEMBER 20, 2019, AT A GENTIL CARIOCA GALLERY IN RIO DE JANEIRO
But you start from what the city wants to show to expose what the city doesn’t
want to show... BY CLARISSA DINIZ
Yes, as they are very elaborate and ancient constructions, I try to identify the
symbolic and historical roots and their different manifestations, how these fictions AT THE CENTER OF THE EXHIBITION SUTUR|AR LIBERT|AR — Marcela Cantuária’s solo show
are incorporated into the collective imagination of the city, and how they act and are presented at Helio Oiticica Art Center in July — there was the Tarot mandala developed
instrumentalized in the different wars for power. In the case of Minas this is also very by Alejandro Jodorowsky with the intention of showing its simultaneous unity and
strong. Minas is a bit of “red hot cuteness”. No one will speak badly of Minas Gerais, plurality: “The Tarot must be seen. (...) It is a language that speaks of the present”,
which has that food, an ideal of hospitality. But other than that it’s a place of power, of and not of the future.
money, it’s one of the few states that doesn’t have Black Consciousness Day, despite Interpreting Tarot is also a therapy. According to Jodorowsky, when faced with his
its past, it’s all very veiled. “symbol-rich images”, we must “reject [the meanings] that are the product of anguish
and choose those that [take us] closer to divine consciousness”. It is, therefore, as
In the surface you work with various planes and layers of power that characterize a collective therapy that Marcela Cantuária has faced the images of trauma and
societies as politics, religion, media, police, market. How do you choose these colonial wounds, electing, in her vast imagination, those to which she is dedicated to
worked themes? interpreting, giving her meanings.
It’s very natural, coming to places and watching, feeling, talking. Of course all of these Her work produces a singular imaginary by intentionally corrupting hegemonic history
layers are present everywhere, but in each they act differently with other narratives. and the meanings it attributes to collective memories. Cantuária causes glitches and
For example, religion works in different ways in every place, even with very different makes the images left by the colonial world flawed, rolling up the necessary symbolic
physical constructs and different preaching styles. But deep down, with the same space through which its allegorical paintings sprout. Consisting of collages of diverse
desire for conquest. In the case of the media too. In Rio, for example, it has a very images, taken from different contexts and resignified under the uniqueness of the
strong media construction through both soap operas and police news, creating this aesthetic-political regime of her paintings, the artist’s allegories dispute the current
schizophrenic narrative, represented by the wind rose in the SuperRio. In MG you historicity, occupying it with heroines, anonymous and memories that have been
always see a narrative of a “back to the soil”, a more rural image, a more pure idea, programmatically excluded by her.
and this is exalted in the media. ***

And your work is always questioning these official narratives, bringing hidden There were many allegories gathered in SUTUR|AR LIBERT|AR.
things. Around the mandala were the paintings from the Rainhas series (2018) - four women
Yes, the fiction of racial democracy, for example, which in each place is narrated in whose powers are allegorized as updating and refounding the Tarot ladies’ archetypes.
a way. And it is one of the central fictions of Brazil’s construction, which serves to As allegories, they are based on the symbolic and social force of elements such as
appease, exploit. This denial of the slave past. Speaking of Minas again, which is the pigeons, scythes, bikinis or balaclavas, painted in turn as part of a regime of intensity
coolest thing for me, there’s all this instrumentalization of the Chica da Silva myth. of color, matter and space that imply, at the same time, our retina, our body, our
Everywhere you go there is this narrative that says “look, there’s Chica da Silva, rich, memory and our imagination.
beautiful slave”. And then it looks like it’s all right. The thing gets more subtle, but The archetypal feminine dimensions were in turn combined with allegories of warriors,
perhaps for that very reason more perverse. With this layer of honey, sweet frosting. activists, mothers, militants, and other women whose lives were and are synonymous
with the struggle for social justice and freedom. Among others, Jovita Feitosa, Juana
In addition to dealing with real cities, many real figures also emerge. How do you Azurduy, Dolores Cacuango, Trânsito Amaguaña and Marielle Franco are part of the

Book_ARTEBrasileiros_49.indb 120 14/11/19 01:00