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to have their own conscience, but without It was always important to produce helena almeida (1934-2018), a
any innocence. They are children who know, with my time at my whim […], without Portuguese artist whose work is revisited
children who remember”, say Yuri Quevedo prey, […] but I spent ten years without in a large anthology at the Instituto
and Ana Maria Maia, in the text specially taking vacations”, he says, about the Moreira Salles, over the course of
written for the flock exhibition catalogue. pressure that surrounds an artist, when more than 50 years has carried out an
For Obá, “they are like ibejis”, referring he becomes more recognized and asked investigation that is at once diverse and
to the symbolic figures of Yoruba culture for commitments linked to individual relentless, which has her own image
that, in general, within the cultural exhibitions and group shows. as the central axis and photography
contexts of the African continent, call For Obá, work and meetings are as the main means of expression.
Ibeji a child-orixá that names two twin fundamental during his career. One Surprisingly faithful to a restricted range
infantile entities. Because they are twins, of them was with Flavia Gimenez, at of procedures, themes and questions,
they are associated with a principle Elefante, and another, in 2015, with it surgically touches on some of the
of human duality: luck and bad luck. Renato Silva, from the Mendes Wood dm issues that most mobilized art from the
Because they are children, they are gallery, where he held his first exhibition, end of the 1960s onwards, such as self-
connected to everything that begins Antonio Obá, in 2016. From then on, he representation and the discussion about
and sprouts: the source of a river, the held several exhibitions with the gallery, the expansion of limits and possibilities
birth of human beings, the germination including Pele de Dentro (Mendes Wood of the various artistic languages.
of plants, etc. They have a lightness that dm, New York, usa, 2018) and Other Starting almost always from her own
allows them to float. “But they have to be Craf s (Mendes Wood dm, Brussels, image, in a fragmented or integral way,
careful because, if they don’t, they can Belgium, 2021). alone or interacting with provocative
get in the way of the work. […] They are Antonio Obá participated in several elements such as threads, brushstrokes
the child inside us”, says Obá. national and international collectives, or a male leg to which hers is tied, Helena
His works bring stories of segregation with emphasis on the 36th Panorama of positions herself as a concrete body, an
of the black race, episodes of injustice Brazilian Art, mam, São Paulo, Brazil (2018), unavoidable presence that sustains and
committed at different times, in different the Black Encyclopedia , Pinacoteca, at the same time causes a short circuit
places in the world, against black men or São Paulo (2021), Tuymans / Cahn / Oba of the image codes. The relationship
women. In The Bathers n. 3 – Espreita, (Bourse de Commerce (2021/2022) and between Helena Almeida’s work and
2020, whose detail illustrates our cover, the 12th Biennial of Liverpool, England, dominant movements in the 1960s, such
Obá refers to a story that took place in United Kingdom (2023), among others. as minimalism and conceptual art, is
1964, in an establishment still reserved His works are present in several evident. What she offers us, summarizes
for whites at the time, in Saint Augustine, important collections, such as the curator Isabel Carlos, is the “repeated
Florida (usa). Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, presence of herself”. “The image of my
On that occasion, at the Motor Lodge the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de body is not my image, I’m not putting on
hotel, anti-segregation leader Martin Janeiro, the Museum of Art of Rio, the a show”, said Helena herself.
Luther King Jr. he would have tried to Pinacoteca of the State of São Paulo, the The act of posing has always been
have lunch and was stopped. Upon Pinault Collection, the Pérez Art Museum familiar to her, since since she was a little
insisting, he was arrested. Days later, a Miami and Jumex Museo, Mexico, to girl she served as a model for her father,
group of protesters plunged into the pool name just a few. also an artist, the sculptor Leopoldo de
in protest, and the hotel manager even He is currently preparing a next Almeida. Perhaps this waiting time, the
poured a gallon of muriatic acid into the exhibition, to be opened at the end extended immobility in time and space of
water. In the work, children swim calmly, of 2023 at the gallery’s São Paulo the studio, explain some peculiarities of
but on the lookout, next to a crocodile headquarters. Since 2016, it has her production, so close and at the same
that alludes to the time when enslaved gained wide institutional, national and time averse to the theatrical character of
children were used as bait. international recognition. At the end of the happenings and performances that
In the Strange Fruit trilogy, Obá the conversation, another certainty: that marked the artistic scene in the early
evokes the homonymous song by Billie Ibeji, in Obá, has been emerging in a years of her career. The artist clearly
Holiday and the poet Abel Meeropol, who crescendo, in the ambiguity of lightness verbalized that what interested her was
wrote about the lynching of two black and forcefulness, attentive and strong, not the action itself, the confrontation
men in 1930 in the us state of Indiana. as is necessary. between the creator and the public, but
The horror of the case was portrayed the record, the capture of that precise
by photographer Lawrence Beitler: [ 1 ] Text by Antonio Obá, featured in the flock moment that seems to condense the
the bodies, hanging from trees, were exhibition catalog strength of the gesture, just like a silent
watched by the white crowd. movie. Or a succession of photograms,
The idea of suspended bodies is always EXHIBITION SÃO PAULO [pages 40 to 45] which refer to the logic of comics,
present, even in the children painted creating a timeline, explored in some of
on white linen. In Chandelier - Hanging THE IMAGE IN the series on display, such as Inhabited
children, they too are raised up, as SHORT-CIRCUIT screen of 1976.
sanctified. On display at ims Paulista, the Habitated Her work is subtle and provocative,
Photography exhibition brings the subtle combining a nostalgic elegance
the public’s recognition irreverence of Helena Almeida, a woman with a permanent desire to subvert
whose work resisted in a country subjected
“I grew up watching my two parents to the Salazar’s dictatorship for decades relationships and hierarchies, of en
working and creating affective making use of fine irony. The artist
relationships, that was formative […] by maria hirszman erases boundaries between genres,
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