Page 122 - ARTE!Brasileiros #57

ENGLISH VERSION EVERYTHING IN CHECK

Raquel Arnaud. Villani never stopped working. dominant. When, for example, Makunaima, colonial complexity and the collectivity. So,
Currently, he launches his new website, Julio who is my grandfather – Macunaíma who is if I arrived here, others will arrive here too.
Villani, D’ICI, DE LÀ (julio-villani.com), and sets on the cover of Mário de Andrade’s book –
up his next exhibition at the GallEry rx & Slag becomes a mere folklore. We say that Brazilian The testimony in total is blunt and accurate. The
Galleries, Paris, with a new branch in Chelsea, folklore does not exist, it is an invention, it loss is priceless, but the legacy is definitive.
New York, where he presents, from December is an appropriation of our cosmologies and
9 to January 22, 2022, the show Julio Villani, entities. An appropriation. And then, as if we books JacQuEs rancièrE [paGE 104]
Conflicting Perspectives. There are about 20 didn’t exist anymore, let’s turn this beautiful
works, where the line and color are permanently in story into Brazilian folklore. RANCIÈRE REVIEWS
tension. “If only one were to be missing, he says,
the whole building could collapse,” says the text of There is, on his part, a very adequate perception of MODERNISM
the catalogue. “There is a conflict between escape the importance of the Bienal and of the art circuit
lines and perspectives that I think is symptomatic as a space for reflection, something similar to what Author uses as references only texts by white
of what I am – are we all? – living today”, confesses Grada Kilomba defends. She, who was a professor men from Europe and the United States
the artist, thus revealing the choice of the title of at Humboldt University in Berlin, decided to leave
the exhibition. her academic career to devote herself to art, By faBio cypriano
realizing the scope and freedom of this field. It
tribute JaidEr EsBEll [paGEs 100 to 103] is very similar to what Jaider defends when he if there is one plaCe where inClusion,
presents the school as a “colonial apparatus”: decolonialism and anti-racist debate are very
JAIDER ESBELL’S WAR present, it is in the contemporary art scene.
This Bienal, this stage, is a very important Therefore, it is strange that Jacques Rancière’s
In an interview, a Macuxi artist defended the place, one of the last refuges of an idea of new book, Modern Times: Temporality in Art
occupation of art spaces as they would be thought under construction, a place where we and Politics, is dedicated to a kind of revision
“one of the last refuges of an idea of thought need to be. Much more than academia, much of modernism only with references from male,
under construction” more than party politics, much more than white, European or American authors.
bodies such as schools or churches, these After all, his book Distributions of the Sensible:
By faBio cypriano colonial and exotic apparatuses. (...) We call Between Aesthetics and Politics, published in
what we are doing contemporary indigenous Brazil in 2005, is an important reference on the
the Death of JaiDer esbell, aged 41, on art, which we also know is not enough, that understanding that a work of art should always be
November 2, has shocked the contemporary art it does not cover everything, but that it is seen within the “fabric of experience”, as Rancière
circuit. As Denilson Baniwa wrote, “Jaider has necessary to attract some curious, attentive, himself conceptualizes , therefore within a context.
reached this place that for whites is considered a willing to actually listen to some other story, It’s true that the publication that comes out,
success [but that] for both of us was, day by day, who come to ask us: “What is contemporary now in 2021, by publisher N-1, brings together four
becoming a burden”. indigenous art?”. And we say: “It’s a trap to texts already dated, most of them from 2015. Yes,
Much has been said about this loss, but what take good curious people to a place of deep six years now, after #metoo and #blacklivesmatter,
best accounts for this context is a long interview reflection”, which, once again, does not fit in it’s a sufficient period broad, because it changed
that Jaider himself gave to Artur Tavares, published the political movement, in the church, in the cultural and academic paradigms, which no longer
in full in the digital magazine Elástica, an excellent judiciary, or anywhere else, because these tolerate certain outdated practices.
document on the thought of the indigenous activist places were not made for that very reason. In Brazil, this issue becomes even more
(in full in https://elastica.abril.com.br/especiais/ pertinent as reflections on the 100th anniversary of
jaider-esbell-bienal-mam/). Jaider also tells how his fight concerns the the Modern Art Week, that happened in 1922, have
In the interview, Jaider makes it clear how he and indigenous peoples and not just him in particular, already begun, and many seminars and events
other indigenous leaders saw in the contemporary when revealing that the mam São Paulo exhibition have sought to review the anniversary from a
art scene a form of militancy - and did not really was proposed to be an individual and he modified more inclusive perspective and that of authors
claim to be a visual artist: the project: and authors with different representations.

This entire work with the Bienal is part of our So the Bienal invited me because they liked regime of the experienCe
historical policy of indigenous resistance, my work, and they wanted me to do a solo Despite all this, the Marxist Rancière continues to
which is an extension of a movement made exhibition at MAM. I said that I woulnd’t do seek to create concepts that can look at forms of
invisible by the media themselves, the a solo show, because I’m not solo. All my emancipation, such as problematizing the notion
grassroots movement. (...) We are talking work is collective, everything I do is collective. of modern as “building a new common sense, a
about a place that is not exactly that of the I would do it if it was a group show. That’s new sensitive fabric in which prosaic activities
plastic artist. I am not, in fact, a visual artist, when we started to build the exhibition receive the poetic value that it does from them
even though within this performance everyone Moquém_Surarî. The thing has to be strategic the elements of a common world”.
needs to embody this artistic persona to get everywhere. This “sensitive tissue” is also seen as a “regime
to these very privileged places, like the Bienal of experience” and becomes part of the focus of
de São Paulo itself, and not pass by there as However, Jaider explains that clashes with the this research: pointing out that the notion of linear
another artist out there in the world. art circuit were not easy and he did not feel time in modernity must be rethought, as “time is
contemplated by the attitudes of the Bienal de not simply the stretched line between a past and
Jaider also explains in the interview the differences São Paulo, having to pay himself for the presence a future. He is also, and above all, a way of living”.
in times and procedures with the art circuit and of other indigenous people: Of the four texts in the publication, with a rather
how it was necessary to contest the folklorization obvious homage to Charles Chaplin’s Modern
of the indigenous presence both in the Bienal de We are not satisfied. Because first the Bienal Times, two of them are dedicated to specific art
São Paulo and in the Moquém_Surarî exhibition, said it didn’t want any indigenous. Now it’s languages: dance and cinema.
which he organized at the Museum of Modern Art coming out in the media that the Bienal put About dance, he points out the libertarian and
of São Paulo (mam São Paulo): I don’t know how many indigenous artists, free character, especially from the 1920s and 1930s,
that’s not true, we need to clarify. And there’s approaching choreographers and dancers from
In fact, we don’t let anything go by anyway, as more. If they’re already up to it, getting off the a wide spectrum: from the German expressionist
things have been handled for over 500 years. hook, this isn’t right. Because this comes at Mary Wigman (1886-1973), precursor of dance-
Our stories and our thoughts have always a cost, and who is paying this bill is basically theater, to the North American Lucinda Childs .
been interpreted, introduced and shaped by me – and I’m talking about money. Because In the essay on cinema, Rancière deals with
anthropologists, by priests, by politicians, the Bienal pays a fee of 12 thousand reais, specific scenes from three films: Man with a Movie
while we were never able to print an authorial take your work and forget about it. And then, Camera (1929), by Dziga Vertov, The Grapes of
thought that would properly place us in a place when it comes to contemporary indigenous Wrath (1940), by John Ford, and Juventude em
of people who have their own worlds, their own art, it is not enough. Because when you pick Marcha (2006), by Portuguese Pedro Costa. At
cosmologies. And then we have to parallelize up a work by the artist, you get his/her whole least there, Costa represents a certain marginality
at all times with the culture that wants to be story long before the colony. It takes all this in the author’s very Eurocentric thought.
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