Page 95 - ARTE!Brasileiros #52
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or peace.  The large canvases, some of them   death, which he started to make at 15.  Winner of the 2020 edition of Pipa Online,
           unpublished, arranged in a good montage by    To try to categorize Aguilar’s art is to run after   Isael Maxakali portrays in films, drawings
           Haron Cohen, are unfinished demonstrations   the wind.  To this day, he lives the multiplicity of   and animations the culture of his people,
                                                                             who now live in a critical situation in five
           of an art of hypotheses that never seem to have   his transgressions in literature, painting, video art,   villages in the northwest of the Brazilian
           an end. In Picasso’s Mademoiselles d´Avignon,   music, cinema.  His painting gained momentum   state of Minas Gerais
           which bears the title 1907, he celebrates the year   in 1963 when he caught the attention of Mário
           of the invention of modern art and the creation   Pedrosa and Clarival do Prado Valladares.     By marCos grinspUm ferraz
           of Einstein’s theory of special relativity.  His canvases already brought the colors and
             Aguilar’s work is intense and obsessive as   techniques that resemble the CoBrA group.  Two   The first sentence spoken by Isael Maxakali
           attested by the Amazon River, a large canvas   years later he participates in the anthological   when answering the call of arte!brasileiros
           that reflects his connection with environmental   exhibition Opinion 65, with Hélio Oiticica,   for an interview about his work and the award
           activism in the defense of the planet that,   Rubens Gerchman, Antonio Dias, Carlos Vergara,   he received last August was quite clarifying on
           according to him, has been destroyed by greed   considered a landmark in Brazilian art.  how the artist thinks: “For me it is a great honor,
           and ignorance. “This screen is linked to the    “With the ai-5, the climate is unbearable   because with my eye I want to enlighten the
           Rios Voadores series, an allusion to the moving   and silent for London, where Caetano, Gil   Maxakali people. If my name has grown a lot,
           atmospheric watercourses, passing over our   and Mautner were already”.  In the area of      so has the name of the indigenous people and
           heads carrying moisture from the Amazon Basin   performances,  she  creates  controversial   our village. If I win a prize, they win too.” And he
           to the Midwest, Southeast and South of Brazil”.     works such as Opera of the Third World, with   adds, “It has enlightened my people, who have
           Since 2004, Aguilar has been divided between   Lucila Meirelles, and presented at Journées   always suffered discrimination and prejudice.”
           São Paulo and Alter do Chão, in Pará, where   interdisciplinaires sur l’art corporel et   The talk about the Maxakali and the concern
           he maintains a house / studio and a strong   performances, in the Beaubourg de Paris, and   about the difficult situation experienced by them
           relationship with the Amazon rainforest and   irritates critics.  “They just didn’t interrupt us   in the villages of Minas Gerais demonstrate
           the local riverside community, involving him   because there’s no censorship there.”  The   a vision where achievements in the personal
           in his collective works. The immense canvas   1980s were marked by Casa Azul, his studio at   sphere only have value if they come for the
           is an ode to nature and an alert cry, the most   Joaquim Eugênio de Lima, where intellectuals   collective good. Thus, in films, drawings and
           powerful and emblematic work of the show.  such as Mário Schenberg, Haroldo and Augusto   animations produced by Isael over about 15
             Aguilar maintains a free narrative, without   de Campos passed, the painter Nuno Ramos and   years of his career, the artist seeks to present the
           filters and brings the multiplicity of interests that   the composer and musician Arnaldo Antunes,   identity - “true”, as he points out - of the Maxakali
           gravitate around his reflections on reasoning,   who soon created the band  Titans.  Aguilar   (or Tikmū ūn as they defined themselves).
           free will, destiny, environment.  Ten of his   mixes Bukowski with Indian teachings, expands   “In my work I want to show our culture to all
           large canvases rehearse a flight over Western   his circuit, exhibits in Germany and Japan, wins   Brazil to recognize and respect. And so be able to
           civilization, from Greek philosophers to a possible   the pages of Art in America.  help indigenous peoples to have land, to reclaim
           occupation of Mars in 2050. In a second set    In 1980, the lobby of the Pinacoteca do Estado,   their territory. Because today the earth weeps,
           of 35 paintings that can be read as tarot cards,   former museum amphitheater, burned down   the river is drying up, it’s polluted. There’s a lot
           he does the opposite way, from object to  idea.     with the performance Concerto for Box and   of asphalt, glass and cement in place of the
           He proposes to the visitor a game, a trip to   Piano Gloves.  “This event started the Banda   woods. And here comes the heat, the heating,
           imagined places.  “Destinations are always   Performática with Arnaldo Antunes and other   and it all sickens people,” says Isael.
           changing, it depends on you, like everything in   friends.  We did a lot of shows and recorded a   The artist received Pipa Online, a category
           life”.  Each picture is identified as the choice of   record ”.  In 86 he surprises with the intervention in   open to popular voting for one of the most
           each person and constitutes a ciphered field   the Museum of Image and Sound with Antichrist,   important art awards in the country, with 4,191
           with dialogues between what we see and how   “an allusion to the Bulgarian artist Christo who   votes. Isael was awarded R$ 15,000 and is
           we understand what we see.  “The most recent   wrapped monuments, museums, bridges”.     expected to donate a work to the pipa Institute.
           screen of the exhibition I made three weeks ago,   Aguilar unwraps the mis, which was covered with   Following Jaider Esbell and Arissana Pataxó
           as a performance inside the exhibition room.     black plastic during the iv Videobrasil Festival,   (in 2016) and Denilson Baniwa (in 2019), this is
           In the expanded field, expanded gestures are   when the museum was on Avenida Europa.  “We   the third edition in the last five years in which
           born that form a great wave ”.  In another work,   did everything with a lot of fun.”  artists of indigenous origin receive Pipa Online.
           a tangle of threads named after neighborhoods    All phases and languages    of Aguilar   For Baniwa, “despite all the controversy that
           emerges under the title São Paulo, a friction   intertwine, dialogue with each other and are   is an award, since it is always the result of the
           of art and urbanism, with their paint-smeared   witnesses of a strangeness that changes the   erasure of other stories - there is only one winner
           shoes hanging in the air.        viewer’s gaze on reality and representation.     because there is a loser - it is also the recognition
              The evolutionary line of 60 years of art   His paintings are performances of colors and   of a journey that is being more visible now”.
           reveals Aguilar and his intense involvement   gestures that bring to the same space the   “So from where I am, as an Indigenous, I think
           with Brazilian contemporary art.  “It all started   perception of a unique reality, different from   it’s wonderful, because I was saturated with
           in the mid-1950s, with my high school classmate   that which moves conventional man.  seeing in the awards always faces that didn’t
           Jorge Mautner.  At 15 we read everything that                     look like me, nor with with the people that I walk
           falls into our hands.  I wanted to be a writer, but   aWard | pipa online [pages 64 to 67]  with,” he says.
           I followed the visual arts and Mautner went to   A WORK THAT HELPS   The artist’s concern that an award will put
           literature ”.  At the age of 22 Aguilar exhibits at               different fundamental narratives in dispute - of
           the vii Bienal de São Paulo and Mautner, at the  “ENLIGHTEN” THE   indigenous, black, poor or non-binary people
           age of 21, launches the book God of rain and  MAXAKALI PEOPLE    – has nevertheless been accompanied by

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