Page 105 - ARTE!Brasileiros #58

houses made of shards of tiles, bringing together both The retrospective Tunga: magnetic conjunctions , considered by Paulo Venancio Filho as one of Tunga’s [PAGE 10]
abstract and figurative patterns. A video at the entrance made up of approximately 300 works exhibited at Itaú first experiments with objects, which became recurrent
to the exhibition, made by Danielle Fonseca, documents Cultural and Instituto Tomie Ohtake – co-ordinated by in his production. The exhibition also rescues rarities
examples of these constructions with testimonies of Instituto Tunga – is permeated with curiously hybrid such as Protuberant Drawings , Venus,what Tunga
residents who used such procedures in their homes. thoughts, revealed in the artist’s text or speech. His calls works arising from histories or histories arising [PAGES 11 ANd 12]
That is, it is a counter-hegemonic style and outside the fictional imagery is a paradigm of affective insights that from works. Narratives are a form of drawing that uses
standard of vernacular character. Despite this great potentiate the construction of individual mythologies language, as in the Object of Children’s Knowledge series
start, there are no more cases for this type of alternative supported by science, archeology, zoology and, above , composed of watercolors and ink, from the 1970s. In
construction process, which is a shame. all, literature. Psychoanalysis emerges in small narrative this sense, the exhibition uses records and the artist’s [PAGES 13 to 15]
Even so, there is no lack of surprising works, such as asides, as an agent of an exercise in transience with concern with the formation of a file. In this evolutionary
the native Dorian Gray (1930-2017), who appears with a doses of reason, humor and irony. Tunga’s language, line, the retrospective brings projects in ceramics and
tapestry with floral motifs from 1973. The artist named full of metaphors in its symbolic essence, experiences metal, sketches for future works, jewelry designed by
Oscar Wilde is one of the happy discoveries of the show. deviations, penetrates precarious structures loaded with him, videos, photographs, texts. Finally, a summary of
Curated by Aldrin Figueiredo, Clarissa Diniz, Divino Sobral, sensual pleasure and secret provocation. the enigmas left by Tunga that call into question what
Marcelo Campos, Paula Ramos and Raphael Fonseca The curatorship of Paulo Venancio Filho promotes is announced, what is seen, what is understood and
and consulting by Fernanda Pitta, damn it is organized good and wide choices and it also puts Tunga’s works/ what remains.
into four modules: Let talk; Iconoclastic centaurs; I will truths on the agenda in an exhibition without chronological
gather, I will garrison; and Vandals of the Apocalypse. order that mixes works from all eras, until 2016, the year of exhibitions SAo PAUlo [PAGES 78 to 85]
The first is dedicated to a very contemporary debate the artist’s death. The space becomes cramped to exhibit
concerning cultural appropriation. It features, among such a production, but the expography is saved by the
windows and islands installed in the exhibition space. The PARADISE MUST
other works, a kind of felt collage by Regina Gomide
Graz (1897-1973), called Indians , from the 1930s, in which infinity of objects, apparently shuffled and disconnected, BE DEFENDED
indigenous people are represented hunting. A typical confirms the organicity of Tunga’s universe. He always
procedure of modernism, this representation of “exotic” liked mess. Not of order or disorder. “Mess!” as he used Sebastião Salgado portrays the beauty of
or “savage” cultures, as they were called at the time, can to say. “What I have in my hand I move around until I lose the Amazon and its peoples in an urgent
now be seen in a context of revision about the place of it, and then I find it again. Finding what I lost,I find the plea for the salvation of the forest
speech. Something similar occurs with the silver vases by new again, I find the new in the old again – it’s like the
Maria Hirsch da Silva Braga (1875-1960), very impressive light, the old light, rested and always new again”. This By MIGUEl GroISMAN
indeed, decorated with indigenous patterns. Today, such narrative, so repeated by him, opens the book Barroco
works are questioned for appropriating other cultures. de Lírios (1997), edited by Cosac & Naify. “why DiD i return to the amazon?”, asks
“By assuming that the indigenous people would Antônio José de Barros Carvalho e Mello Mourão (1952- Sebastião Salgado in the presentation of his recent
be ‘extinct’ or ‘acculturated’ and that, therefore, they 2016), or simply Tunga, was born in Palmares (PE), grew up work named after “the forest that extends to infinity”.
should supposedly have their memories ‘preserved’ and lived in Rio de Janeiro. He lived in a mansion owned Now, eight years after the start of his venture in the
by the work of white artists, art nurtured a symbolic by Cosme Velho, owned by his maternal grandfather, Amazon, the photographer manages to answer that he
economy anchored in the historical impossibility of self- Senator Barros de Carvalho, a collector of modern and returned not for the dark side – the fires, deforestation,
representation that, in its time, it is constantly updated baroque Brazilian art. He was one of those responsible the poisoning of rivers by miners, drug trafficking – but
in the ‘well-intentioned’ and profitable aesthetic and for Tunga’s systematic reading of great philosophers, to savor the incomparable beauty of the Amazon and
political horizon of the representation of the Other”, writers and poets. The artist did not therefore intend renew his bond with the native peoples who care for
says the curatorship in a discreet text on the wall, but to intellectualize his art, he chose and visually codified the forest so diligently.
which leads the show to the decolonial debate in an the objects, removing them from everyday life or not, “When I started photographing the Amazon, the region
explicit way. This, by the way, is one of the merits of the making them dialogue naturally with space. Tunga’s was by no means in evidence. I thought I had to do the
exhibition: presenting a powerful and diversified visuality, fictional texts are developed with writings that arise from photographs. I felt the biome threatened and I saw a
mixed with specific critical texts that problematize issues personal mythologies with which he builds, deconstructs, very big difference between the Amazon of the 1980s
related to the selected works. reconstructs his work, in permanent re-readings.Word and then the Amazon of the early 2000s”. Without a
This is also the case in the other modules, Iconoclastic and image, according to him, touch each other intimately, specific project in mind (whether it was the publication
Centaurs, which address performative actions and without a hierarchical relationship between them, but in or the traveling exhibition that is now at Sesc Pompeia,
transformations; I will gather, I will garnish, about the feast a kind of copula, friction that generates a third element. in São Paulo), Salgado’s urgency took him to travel
and the collective creation; and, finally, Vandals of the There are many stories diluted in his “installations”, a term through the forest from the state of Pará to Amazonas,
apocalypse, which deals with the ruins and catastrophes he coined to replace “installations”, as in From la voie from Acre to Rondônia, Maranhão to Mato Grosso. The
derived from the national modernist project. It is in the humide, (2014), considered his last series of sculptures. comprehensive movements were always foreseen by
latter that there are paintings by José Antonio da Silva This spatial composition takes place through the possible fUNAI – Fundação Nacional do Índio, responsible for
(1909-1996), such as Trem e Lavoura , from 1959, in which configurations between the objects worked in plaster, protecting the rights of indigenous peoples throughout
the vision of progress was already denounced as the terracotta and crystals, supported by a kind of tripod, with the national territory. “Before finalizing plans to visit a
destruction of forests, anticipating the devastating role cauldrons and body parts in direct reference to alchemy. specific group, they consulted with the community to
of agribusiness. As Nicolas Bourriaud defines, each exhibition contains see if they would be willing to receive an outsider. In
Such a comprehensive exhibition – let’s remember, the plot of another, each work can be inserted in several my case, a photographer,” he says. “Through fUNAI, I
there are 650 works, including even the triptych Sôdade programs and serve as a multiple plot. The concept fits hired a translator for each trip, usually someone of the
de Cordão , from 1940, by the Ukrainian artist living in into the reassembly of the huge sculpture Magnetic ethnic group in question, who had spent some time
Brazil, Dimitri Ismailovitch (1892-1976) – in a difficult and Gravitation , made up of steel sheet, iron filings, and long abroad and, therefore, learned Portuguese”. Prior to
small space, gains power thanks to a montage of simple steel wires that in 1987 reached all floors of the pavilion at entering the jungle, Salgado and his team stocked up
and modest architectural design, which puts the works the 19th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Sheila Leirner. on food, as part of the agreement to be there was not to
in the foreground. It would be excellent to have a catalog Now, at Tomie Ohtake, the piece does not have the same depend on the communities for food. They also traveled
documenting this extensive research, after all, it is the impact due to the visual interference in the space, open with other essentials such as: antivenom, solar panels,
catalogs that go down in history. And, in this narrative, to other departments. However, it is worth reviewing. water purification solution, iPod. In order to be fair and
Tarsila do Amaral and Anita Malfatti, finally, are not the Another special moment is the video installation Ão, contracted, it was also necessary to complete a ten-day
protagonists. Even lacking a record for the future, it is from 1981, which marked Tunga’s debut in audiovisual, “quarantine” when they arrived at the designated fUNAI
one of the most forceful reparations on modernism and filmed in 16mm and looping. The gigantic projection in a post, in order to avoid the transmission of diseases,
on the Week in the present. room at Tomie Ohtake is fixed on the curve of a tunnel, as viruses and bacteria from outside to indigenous peoples.
if there was no entrance or exit and it was impossible to Since the adoption of the Brazilian Constitution of 1988,
exhibitions SAo PAUlo [PAGES 74 to 77] get out. Place, body, action and movement make room for 26% of the Amazon – equivalent to 13% of the entire
reflections on time/memory, a primordial element in this Brazilian territory – has been reserved exclusively for
“TUNGA: CONJUNÇÕES work, whose soundtrack Night and Day is interpreted by indigenous communities, recalls the photographer.
In this immensity, Salgado recorded majestic natural
Frank Sinatra. According to Paulo Venancio, the spectator
IMAGÉTICAS” is involved in two continuous movements: that of the film events through air, such as aerial rivers and Amazonian
mountains, and water, through weeks of navigating the
that circulates around the room and that of the image
CELEBRATES A PROJECT projected on the screen, as if it were placed “inside” a Rio Negro. Back on land he accompanied tribes in hunting,
visual sculpture. The work had an impact on Walter
fishing and in rituals where his presence was allowed. “In
THAT REMAINS Zanini, who exhibited it at the 16th Bienal de São Paulo most villages, the density of the bush completely blocks
in 1981, when he was the general curator.
the view from a distance. The sky itself is framed by giant
On display jointly at Itaú Cultural and Body and eroticism permeate the artist’s production trees. When members of indigenous communities go
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, a retrospective of due to their meanings. According to psychoanalyst hunting or fishing, they completely disappear within
the celebrated artist opens up reflections Suely Rolnik, Tunga’s works are vibrant through strange seconds. Therefore, whenever I accompanied them, I
had the habit of keeping close to their heels, not losing
on the attitude towards art attractions, erotic tension, and unusual montages. The sight of them for a second for fear of losing myself”.
iconic Swimming pool facility, shown only once in 1975,
and disappeared around the same time without a trace, Inside the villages, a mobile studio was also improvised
By lEoNor AMArANtE has been reassembled. The work displays a tripod, on and called those who felt comfortable to have their portrait
which a cap with the title of the work written in lead taken. Despite the artificiality, the smoothness of the
artists’ writings became ubiquitous structures letters, while an air pump is suspended by a chain and canvas – as opposed to the texture of the vegetation –
in the international art circuit around the 1960s, when a submerged photograph floats in suspension. The provided a more appropriate field for traditional objects
new narratives gained space and deepened the nature work was done in 1975, during the worst moments of and customs to surface without distractions. Meanwhile,
of the exercise of criticism. This attitude represented a the dictatorship in Brazil, and it leaves latent Tunga’s his journey up the Rio Negro and through the Anavilhanas
significant transformation in the articulation of art theory. thinking about the political nature of the image. This is National Park took him to the mouth of the Jaú River,
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