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my first love in art—and what she told me then had moved into a larger apartment/studio in a I was still at Guignard School – I did architecture
definitively terminated my adolescent reading similarly hideous building close to the Porte de and Guignard at the same time – when I did the
of his art, standard at the time, as a kind of Vanves—a gathering place for every Brazilian photography option. That’s when I said: “That’s
Neoplatonic paean to pure form). I learned a lot artist, singer, or filmmaker passing through Paris what I want to do, that’s my main medium.”
about Lygia’s past involvement with geometric (there were many, especially during the years of Between starting to work with photography and
abstraction, enough to understand that it was her the military dictatorship). Musician composer taking on certain freakeries, certain unrest (cisma
foreignness to the European tradition of abstract Caetano Veloso, who was then living in exile in is stuff from people from Minas Geraes. Mineiro
art that had allowed her to creatively misread it. London, never failed to show up if he was on tour cisma!) and to elect certain issues, certain topics,
Many details were filled in later through other in the French capital (he commemorated one of was a very short time.
conversations and with the help of the Robho his visits with a song—“If You Hold a Stone”—
dossier mentioned above. Since what follows composed in homage to Pedra e ar). The first job is from 1987. It must be interesting
are historical events that I only heard of long after this process of revisiting old productions.
they occurred, I will for a moment abandon the 1. Serge Guilbaut, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern I used a doll from the 1950s, which was my

guise of the autobiographer. Art: Abstract Expressionism, Freedom, and the Cold War sister’s, very ugly, to embody Alice,Lewis
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). As I recall, Carroll’s character. But it was a kind of a pretext
(...) the French art world was completely oblivious to what to do some photographic experimentation.
was happening across the Atlantic – American art was We discussed a lot about recurring things,
One of the propositions I remember best from virtually absent from the walls of galleries and museums. especially because there is a work called Círculos
that inaugural afternoon is Pedra e ar (1966). An exception such as the exhibition A Arte do Real, in which Viciosos (Vicious Circles), from the collection of
She placed in my hand a small transparent the French public discovered minimalism, was received Pinacoteca and that will be in the exhibition. In
plastic bag that she had just blown up and with total incomprehension. It is true that the timing was my life there are a lot of things that come and
sealed with a rubber band. It was hot with her unfortunate, having taken place in November-December go. Because I make them come back, I provoke
breath (the plastic was very thin). She placed a 1968, at the height of anti-us sentiment. it. And there are also issues that I’ve dealt with
pebble on one of its corners, which balanced 2. The full title of this work is A casa é o corpo. Penetração, within my work that don’t abandon me. It’s not
precariously and sank into the corner of the bag. ovulação, germinação, expulsão.. that they come back, they never come out. There
It hung there, nearly fell, but even the slightest 3. Lygia Clark, “L’art, c’est le corps,” in Preuves 13 (1973): 142. are problems that are always in my head because
change in the pressure of my hands caused it to 4. Guy Brett, “Lygia Clark: The Borderline Between Art and they are amazing. Haunting, I don’t even know
rise again like a floating bob. I felt as though I was Life,” Third Text 1 (Autumn 1987): 84. if there’s a word, it’s a thing of the territory of
clumsily helping a very delicate animal to give photography, isn’t it?
birth (this feeling was certainly enhanced by my interview rosÂnGEla rEnnÓ [paGEs 76 to 81]
having just performed on myself the “caesarian” Like something veiled, latent? It seems like
section prescribed by one of the uncomfortable THE ENTANGLED TIMES you’re always trying to get to the bone, but that
latex jumpsuits of her Roupa-corpo-roupa bone is always a little further away.
series, Cesariana [1967]). The contrast between OF ROSÂNGELA RENNÓ Because I also think that’s also what makes the
the nothingness of the prop and the intensity great power of the photographic image. It’s
of my perception while playing yo-yo/peek-a- Exhibition at Estação Pinacoteca presents by haunting that you can get between fiction
boo (mildly reenacting the famous fort/da play a wide range of research elaborated and reality. Today we discuss this a lot: how
described by Freud in his account of children’s by the artist from Minas Gerais over 35 much information, how much you can project of
sexuality), this gap between the simplicity of the years of career, many of them having fictional in a supposed information, in objective
actual gesture and the kind of generic memory as main elements the memory and the information. We won’t even give too much room
of the body it awoke in me, is something that photographic image to talk about the obvious, which is the political
I never forgot. It is as if a prehuman body had use that can be made of it. But this territory, this
been brought back from an archaic bank of thing between fiction and reality, has always
sensations stored somewhere in my species By maria HirsZman existed in photography. It’s just that sometimes
memory, as if Lygia’s work were countering it gets more attention. And it seems that in the
Darwin’s evolution. There is the tactile aspect: the work of rosÂngela rennó will be revisited territory of digital this is easier to understand.
the skin of the hand, redoubled by the plastic skin in a large anthological exhibition, to be inaugurated
that molds it, becomes a kind of autonomous at Estação Pinacoteca, on October 2, giving the Is the Arquivo Universal (Universal Archive),
organ. Then there is the dissonant visual aspect: public the opportunity to see together the power of this gathering of material about the image you
the stone’s movement of protention/retention its production. Having as main elements memory started in the 1990s, still alive? How will he be
(which Lygia specifically related to Albers’s and image, especially the photographic, the present at the exhibition?
Structural Constellations), the plastic bag’s artist deconstructs structures of perpetuation of We get older, we get more selective. It must
swelling or deflation, its corner’s pointedness or power, illuminates social perversions and brings be a very good story to keep. I’ve been saying
curvaceousness—all this clearly referring to the out contrivances of our social order that help us less stuff, but I keep a lot of stuff. The Arquivo
sexual act but without one’s being able at any to illuminate and deconstruct naturalizations that Universal is the file of texts over image. It will
moment to assign a specific role (or gender) to sometimes seem unshakable. appear in the exhibition with several of the
any of the elements. Curated by Ana Maria Maia, the exhibition presents devices I’ve used before. It is at the base of
a wide range of research and questions elaborated installations such as Hipocampo, which must
The next “proposition” I was handed was Respire by the artist over 35 years. There are anthological have about 18 texts with phosphorescent
comigo), whose prop is a simple rubber tube works, such as the series Vermelha (Militares), Vulgo letter, has some texts tattooed on skin and
used by underwater divers for breathing. I quote or Apagamentos, mixed with works very few seen, photographed ... It has studio remains too.
Lygia here: “You join the two ends of the tube from the beginning of the career or unpublished There are, for example, two texts that were in
together and place your thumb over the joint. research in Brazil as Eaux de Colonies (2019). my atelier because no one wanted to. These are
As you stretch the tube next to your ear, you’re Finally, Pequena Ecologia da Imagem (Little horrible texts, horrible subjects, that now go
perturbed by a suffocating sound of breathing. Ecology of the Image), title of the exhibition that back to the wall. The curious thing is that these
The first time I did it, the consciousness of derives from a work done in 1988, points to the poetic ugly ducklings, which no one wants to have in
my breathing obsessed me for several stifling core around which Rosângela orbits, marked by the room, are linked to racism and colonialism.
hours.” As Guy Brett notes, we have “the intertwined times, by the persistent use of private Look at the coincidence.
sensation of taking out our own lung and working images and a fascination to draw from the invisibility
it like any other object”—which can be either of anonymous files and stories, aspects that she Are they in the category of our haunts?
terrifying or inspiring. addresses in the following interview. Hauntings that never really stopped coming out
of our imagination. They just weren’t in the front.
I did not perceive the terrifying implications arte!brasileiros - Does this exhibition revisit It’s very curious. Something I showed, five years
at the time. I was hooked, so to speak. Lygia your entire career? Can it be considered a great ago, that bothered. And I want to show again, to
became the most important part of my “support retrospective? bother again. Even if it’s to see if anything has
group” as a teenager, and I saw her on each of Rosângela Rennó - She’s big, but it’s changed or not. Deep down, we do these things
my trips to Paris during the following academic not retrospective. First because the word or insist on showing certain things, talking again,
year. Then, after high-school graduation, I came retrospective already panics me, puts us at a because only by repeating that we can at some
to the United States as an exchange student certain age that we refuse to admit that we have. point change the perception of something. The
for a year, and we began a correspondence But also because a lot has been left out, which human being only learns if you hammer the same
that lasted until I came to live in Paris in the fall is natural in any exhibition. It was conducted to thing several times.
of 1971—after which it stopped for the simple have a certain type of work and a temperature.
reason that I saw her almost every day until If in fact it were to be retrospective, we would Could you talk about the issue of ecology, which
she returned to Brazil in 1976 (for one thing, her have to cover other issues. is in the title of the exhibition? It has to do with
psychoanalyst lived just a block away from my You’ve been working in photography forever, this recovery of materials that you do, but there
tiny student den). By the time I got to Paris she haven’t you? are other dimensions less evident, no?
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