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Working with memory is working with present

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João Fernandes fala no V Seminário Internacional ARTE!Brasileiros, intitulado "Arte além da arte". Foto: Marina Malheiros

AMAZON DESTRUCTION, war on the arts. Despite the climate of catastrophe, the curator João Fernandes arrives optimistic. “Brazil, in the midst of every tragic dimension of its history, has always been able to create ways to overcome these traumas,” he observes from his new room, on Paulista Avenue, just across the headquarters of the Moreira Salles Institute. Respected in the international circuit, Fernandes was head of the Serralves Foundation, in Porto, between 1996 and 2012, today one of the most renowned in contemporary art, and served six years as artistic director of Reina Sofia in Madrid, an essential institution for the creation of new narratives in art history.

Knowledgeable about Brazilian art in depth, regular visitor since 1998, when he appointed Portuguese representation at the biennial dealing with Anthropophagy, Fernandes tells of his new plans in his new role:

ARTE!Brasileiros – What is it like to arrive at such a dramatic moment in Brazil that until the evening comes in the middle of the afternoon?

JOÃO FERNANDES – I was amazed, I did not know what was going on, I imagined that in winter Sao Paulo darkens at 3 pm (laughs) as occurs in Germany.

Yeah, but getting through all this doesn’t carry a certain urgency, although the IMS has had very relevant shows about the Brazilian history and moment as Corpo a Corpo, Conflitos or even Claudia Andujar, A Luta Yanomami, in the last two years?

I came to Brazil because I thought it was important to be in Brazil. I recognize that the invitation surprised me, it was far from my expectation to leave the Reina Sofia anytime soon. But when João [Moreira Salles] and Flávio [Pinheiro] asked me to consider taking over the artistic directorship of the institute a year ago, I confess that I was very fascinated. That’s because I knew a part of the institute’s collections and its programming, and at the same time, I think the institute has an ideal condition in its autonomy with its collections and practices to be able to work in Brazil. I know it is not easy to build an institution in Brazil, but neither is it in Portugal, my country. The museum I worked for in Portugal was the first museum of contemporary art in the country and was created only in the late 20th century. Although museums started here before, I know that institutionality is not easy.

For all these reasons, I think the institute is one of the most possible institutions for relating to memory and the present, because memory cannot be indistinct from the present, as the present cannot be indistinct from memory. This is what led me to Reina Sofia, because I was very interested in how Manolo [Manuel Borja–Villel] builds a point of view on history from art history and art history from history, which makes Guernica is not only a masterpiece of art history, but also an important document of a time of conflict that reveals a story from the point of view of the vanquished rather than the victor, which generally conditions the historical narratives. in museums and institutions. So, working with Moreira Salles’ collections means being able to work with the best of a culture that has always fascinated me, and in the language I speak.

What also interested me in inviting my curatorial work was not to be confined to a kind of specialization, an art that is constituted by certain stereotypes to call itself contemporary art, which is paradoxical with the history of art in the 20th century, that always had hybrid forms. So being able to work with collections and programming that allows you to cross literature, photography, visual arts, cinema is for me a fascinating challenge.

There is so much here that opens the way, that criticizes the dominant paths in the classic centers of the construction of modernity, the avant–garde, the geopolitics of the world, that make my presence here a great challenge and a great possibility of work. For all that, I confess that nothing shakes my belief that Brazil will survive and I believe that culture has a role in that.

And that’s one of the reasons I work with art, which is this wonderful thing of anyone thinking or feeling a work of art in the same way. We all have different impressions before a symphony, nobody sees a picture in the same way and when they see the second time they see it differently. And this characteristic of art, which allows radicalization without weakening the feeling of community, is what I believe to be the role of museums, cultural institutions, concert and theater halls, or even the street. The experience of difference, of being together being different, is very important. And the art is the human activities that stimulate it, which teaches how to build community and be together from the differences of feeling and thinking, even in such a tight country as Brazil is. After all, the structuring of this country was so hatred that it manifested itself in forms of threat to the human condition – slavery plays a central role in this, it is one of the most heinous holocausts in human history. Unfortunately, all this still manifests itself in the lack of respect for racial issues, ancestral cultures, and nature. But for this very reason art and culture have survived and created new forms, erudite or popular, that make Brazil a unique situation, I say perhaps because it is my language, but all this has become an undeniable invitation.

Sede do IMS em São Pauloo. Foto: Pedro Vannucchi/Divulgação

In fact, despite all that is happening, there is a perception that cultural institutions have grown in public.

I arrived a week ago and saw wonderful events. The energy that currently exists in Brazil is very unique. The Panorama da Arte Brasileira is a remarkable exhibition, which escapes the stereotypes of contemporary art seen in art biennials, I do not speak here of any specific, which begin to look like art fairs. In the Panorama, there is a Brazilianness that is not nationalistic, but of connection with popular cultures, with the themes of the present, with cultures seen as marginal, and all this converges in a very original way. I was also fortunate to see a show by Flávio de Carvalho where the Teatro Oficina group presented O Bailado do Deus Morto, written in the 1930s, a text that directly links a postcolonial experience with a universal culture of neoclassical and European origin – those masks are Greek, in a way they can be Greek and Brazilian. I also attended the premiere of Kleber Mendonça’s Bacurau, which is a unique moment in the history of cinema: in addition to being the most antifascist western ever made, it is also the possibility of a popular western that reinvents a genre without falling into stereotypes. All this in one week in Brazil.

And how do you intend to work at Moreira Salles?

I confess that on the one hand I will learn much more than I know so far, in relation to everything that happened in Brazilian art and culture, and I want to deepen a whole series of possibilities that the collections of the institute offer and even the crossing of these areas, which It’s something I’ve always enjoyed doing, bringing performing arts and visual arts closer to literature. There are synchronicities in the time of Lygia Clark’s works with Clarice Lispector, and many questions may arise from these syncs, these parallel universes. But I am also aware that Brazil is so far from other places in the world and a lot has not gone here and can be known. At the same time I think it is important that these magnificent collections of the institute and its relation to memory and the concept of document are brought to the world.

Is it a mission? Did they asked you to work these collections abroad?

No. But knowing these collections and how they are unknown in the world, there is no way not to think about that urgency. You have to know the wonderful things that exist here, because Brazil has been seen in many stereotypes that were created. If I can contribute to this it is important. It is fantastic to understand how Claudia Andujar, who was not born here but she arrives here and realizes that one of the riches of Brazil, lies in this wonderful treasure that are indigenous cultures. And she goes there, lives with them and becomes an ambassador. And she is still little known. Similar to it is the Lothar Baumgarten, which from Germany and Humboldt also comes to Brazil and one of his earliest works in Europe is Eldorado, I would rather be there than in northern Westphalia, which is a Voltaire phrase, until He already had that awareness. Anyway, these two names show how there is a universality in Brazil that is very fascinating and can unfold in programming, in moments.

Sede do IMS. Foto Pedro Vannucchi/Divulgação

So do you intend to show Lothar? Can you talk about something you intend to bring to programming?

I am not yet able to present a program, I just arrived, I am talking to the teams. First I want to hear a lot. And I’m happy to arrive and have a great schedule set for the first year, it’s a happiness to come and have a show opening Harun Farocki, with whom I have never worked, but respect a lot. It is one of the works that most motivate the thinking between cinema and society, political history and new forms of narration.

My first attitude, then, is to know how the institute works, how its teams, its programmers work, and gradually build an identity with them in programming.

I think an institution has to have an identity in programming, the institute has unique possibilities for the interaction of its archives and for a very particular action in the integration with the concept of memory. Who has archives like the institute has an obligation, which is to propose to preserve a memory, but to preserve memory is also to build a point of view on that memory and a point of view that is put into discussion. Memory is always something collective, something to be discussed, because those who work with memory work with the present. So, back to your initial question, if the institute did exhibitions like Corpo a Corpo and Conflitos, there is no way not to keep doing exhibitions like that.

I am reflected in my work

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Frame do vídeo "Illusions Vol. II - Oedipus", de Grada Kilomba. Foto: Levi Fanan

“It is unthinkable not to position ourselves on what we do. If I don’t position myself in what I do, then my position is so great in power and privilege that I don’t need to mention myself, and being an exercise in power, then it’s a colonial exercise, ”defended artist Grada Kilomba in debate. at the Pinacoteca do Estado at the opening of his Poetic Disobediences exhibition, running until September 30th.

Kilomba answered an audience question about the reasons for biographical elements in his work, so positioning there denotes this first–person character: “It is important to explain why writing in the first person; I don’t talk about others, I have to talk about myself, about my issues, ”said Djamila Ribeiro, a journalist who today embodies the debate around the place of speech, one of the elements present in the Pinacoteca debate.

For Kilomba, taking a stand represents a major break in art history, as “many artists and many white women artists base their work on the absolute exploration of blackness, testimony, language, speech, images, archives and performance of blackness ”. In writing this, I remember the paintings in which Adriana Varejao portrays herself as an Indian in one of her series, and I think that one really needs to question representation strategies like this one.
Kilomba herself acknowledges that “this worked until recently because many black female artists did not have access to these platforms, but in 2019 it is absolutely impossible to give credibility to these works. It is important that there is no reenactment of colonialism. When we speak on behalf of the other we are reproducing the essence of colonial discourse, which is to use the other as an object for which I speak as a subject. ”

Grada Kilomba e Djamila Ribeiro em conversa na abertura da exposição. Foto Levi Fanan

In his deep, paused voice, Kilomba uses the words precisely, as in the narrations of two of his second–floor video projections of the Pinacoteca: Illusions Vol. I Narcissus and Eco and Illusions Vol. II Oedipus. In them, the artist recounts the Greek myths in a performative way and then deconstructs them from questions surrounding race. While Freudians understand the death of their father as a family conflict, Kilomba points out that “this fixation on the (white) family ignores the historical and political dimensions of this conflict,” according to his own narration.

She goes on to say, “Within a colonial relationship, however marginalized people obey the law, we rarely become the legal authority, instead we become the punished and murdered by the law itself.” , how to portray in an exemplary way the daily discrimination in Brazil.

Already in Illusions II, the artist deals with how “narcissistic is this patriarchal white society in which we all live that is fixed in itself and in the reproduction of its own image, making all others invisible”, using here also its own narration. In the show’s catalog, Djamila Ribeiro points out how, in Brazil, Cida Bento already used the same idea with the term “narcissistic pact of whiteness”. According to her, this concept advocated that “white people consent to a pact to reward themselves, to protect themselves, regardless of the circumstances and, thus, to maintain an unfair state of affairs towards black people.”

Nothing more appropriate, then, to see works like this on the second floor of the Pinacoteca, where is the collection of the institution, so that they function as a disruptive agent in the official narrative of art history that has made the minorities so invisible in Brazil. majorities.

The works of Grada Kilomba occupy exactly the rooms in the corners of the collection, as to allow, between one displacement and another, to be able to reflect on the trauma of the colonizing process. In Table of Goods, for example, she creates a sculpture with cocoa, coffee and sugar, precisely the products produced by slaves in Brazil. Topped by candles, this sculpture becomes a kind of memorial to the sacrifice of millions of black women.

Already in The Dictionary, it creates an environment where five words are described in their meanings – denial, guilt, shame, recognition and reparation – establishing a kind of pathway for how oppression can go through different phases until it is eliminated.
What is notable in this small set of works is the use of the body in a performative way, particularly in the videos, where Kilomba herself works with a group of actors who act on the boundaries between dance and theater.

This strategy is consistent with its position in defense of decolonization. As she states: “The key moment of decolonization is to position ourselves in our subjectivity to always say which place, what time and space I am writing, who I am and what biography of mine is what leads me to write this and to this production of knowledge. I am reflected in my work and this is the key moment in the decolonization of knowledge and the arts. ”

The Pinacoteca discussion is accessible at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovSKrDLs9Ro

Besides participating in the opening of his exhibition, Kilomba was in São Paulo to launch the book “Memories of Plantation. Episodes of daily racism ”, his doctoral thesis defended 10 years ago in Germany, a text that questions not only social violence in discrimination, but the academic format itself.

Pinacoteca reviews and updates Beuys and Oiticica

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Octógono da pinacoteca de São Paulo
Octógono da pinacoteca de São Paulo com obra de Rirkrit Tiravanija e Palco com ativações do coletivo legítima defesa

The exhibition Somos Muit+s: experiments on collectivity takes up the thinking of two essential artists in the second half of the 20th century, Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) and Hélio Oiticica (1937 – 1980) to think about artistic practice today.

In a way, that’s what the 27th São Paulo Biennial, How to Live Together, did in 2006, which started from Oiticica’s proposals to map productions that questioned representation through the antiart proposal and sought to create collective experiences.

After thirteen years, does it make sense to keep looking for reference in Beuys and Oiticica? YEA. During this period, the art market in Brazil expanded considerably, the city’s art institutions strengthened, and the country entered a war against culture. Thus, the radical proposals of art are still more necessary, but are still exercised in a few spaces. However, they are the oxygen of the system and as such essential to understanding what art can mean today.

While visiting the show, I heard a gaucho–accented lady comment with her friend as she read about the Cuban artist Tania Bruguera’s Useful Art project: “No wonder there is so much persecution of art in recent times, because what she [a artist] wants is change, ”she said emphatically, as if seeking approval. Impossible not to have empathy. It is even a relief to realize that even just in a state of power, since Bruguera’s work was not being activated, she made it clear that the business there is not just entertainment.

It makes perfect sense to resume Beuys because after all it is one of the most important artistic proposals, defended since 1977, as read in the text Entry into a living being, reproduced in the catalog of the exhibition, which states: “Every human being is an artist, because he experience the creative essence itself, the formative essence that relates to all the problem fields of life, all the fields in which this human being moves”.
This is the key to a still unexplored thought, which is the understanding that art is a broad field and can unfold into several other fields. This is not absolutely groundbreaking, since Marcel Duchamp had long argued that playing chess was art, but Beuys obviously went much further.

Founder of the Green Party in Germany in 1980, an advocate of direct democracy, an ecologist, his activism has always been an important facet of his artistic activity. In the field of art, Beuys defended the idea of ​​“social sculpture”, a strategy to reconcile artistic practice with social intervention, as occurred in Seven Thousand Oaks. In 1979, on the occasion of the Kassel Documenta, Beuys and locals planted 7,000 oaks to transform the arid German city, one of the most destroyed in World War II. Today, Kassel is an example of “social sculpture.

Beuys was also a critic of exclusion systems. He was expelled from the University of Düsseldorf in 1972 for arguing that his classes should be attended by anyone and not just those enrolled in his classes. He created Frei Internationale Universität with other colleagues in 1983 in his own studio in Düsseldorf.
As it turns out, the political and educational dimensions are essential in his thinking, but not only: he also had a view of the symbolic importance of art, and the first rooms of Somos mu + s prove this concern. In addition to drawings that accompany important issues in his work, the Sculpture Honey Bomb at Work, a machine that pumped honey through the Fridericianum Museum over the 100 days of Documenta 6 in 1977, deals precisely with the infiltration of a natural substance, fertilizer, source of life and immortality. Honey and fat are common elements of Beuys poetics. With honey he brings life and sweetens the institutions of art and, in this sense, it is to be regretted that the work is seen only as an inanimate sculpture, without actually going through the Pinacoteca.

However, the show provides other possible experiences of collectivity, such as Mauricio Ianês performance Ágora, which will be present during its three months of duration. In it, he creates a living space where he serves tea and coffee and allows visitors to manifest through the walls painted in deep red.

Already Monica Nador and the Jardim Miriam Arte Club (Jamac) are seen in a partnership with the Pinacoteca Educational Action Center with the project Extramuros, which has existed since 2008. For the show were held drawing and woodcut workshops, with the results part seen on the exhibit itself or outside the museum.

Another experience is Tania Bruguera’s School of Useful Art, which occupies a show room with intense programming throughout its 11 weeks, including a three–day workshop with the artist herself, from 9–11 October. .

Useful Art is a concept developed by Bruguera in recent years that argues that art should be able to serve as a tool for social change, capable of being implemented through long term projects, the subject matter of the last edition of ARTE! Brasileiros. Everything to do with Beuys’s proposals.

From Oiticica, the show presents the immersive Appropriation Environment (Pool Table, d’après “Van Gogh’s Night Café”), first seen in the Opinion 66 show at the Rio de Janeiro Museum of Modern Art in 1966. In it, a royal pool table is available to visitors in a space with red walls similar to Van Gogh’s painting. Thus, in addition to having coffee with Iane, visitors can also play pool at the show. There, Oiticica includes an important element in his work which is the pleasure of the game as an element for creating bonds, a transforming concept, especially in opposition to Beuys’s Germanic proposals.

In fact, Vivian Caccuri’s work in the show, Ode ao Triangulo, uses the musical instrument to create an installation about the possible elements linked to its form and function, which reverberates in dialogue with works from the collection and activations. throughout the show.

Finally, the Pinacoteca octagon is occupied by a demonstration platform, created by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija in 2000, which has been having different versions since then. It is a free space to be occupied by various activations throughout the show, from yoga classes to graduation parties. There the Collective Self Defense and Aliadxs, formed with the intention of working a poetic of the image of blackness and its social and historical developments, presents Negrx Re–existence, a poetic–political immersion and two other performances.
With all this, we are many, curated by Amanda Arantes, Fernanda Pitta and Jochen Volz puts the Pinacoteca with a living space that rethinks art and its context, as did Beuys and Oiticica in their time.

Nas veredas do sertão

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"Retiro de Caça ou um Outro Capelobo", 2019, de Gê Viana. Fotos: Karina Bacci

As announced by curator Júlia Rebouças in an interview for the 47th edition for ARTE!Brasileiros, the “sertão” over which the 36th Panorama da Arte Brasileira focuses is not the geographical place, but rather a “way of thinking and acting”. With the opening of the exhibition to the public on August 17, it is certain that not everything is or not everything arrives in São Paulo: “This is something that Panorama says. Not everything is concentrated here, not all intelligence is in this place, not all wealth. There is a lot of intelligence and sophistication that we don’t see”, she says in conversation during the exhibition.

Julia chose to ask that the exhibition, made in partnership with Risco Studio, be more open, exercising the idea of ​​what would be a public space or a shared space between all artists: “Or even a landscape, but not a closed room or a private place”, she explains. The curator says the intention is for the audience to be able to see multiple works at once and reflect on how they relate to each other. “I wish things had to live together, either harmoniously or more conflictually.”

“My Life in a Bush of Ghosts”, 2012, de Luciana Magno

The works present in the show invite the public to go far, two of them literally. The artist Raquel Versieux, born in Belo Horizonte and currently living in Ceará, proposes that the public go to Cariri cearense. She presents the Manejo Movente project, carried out in collaboration with Elis Rigoni. The intention is to gather the public in meetings with artists, farmers, students and local leaders to perform land practices, social practices and image practices. The meetings take place in four moments: three in the Cariri region and one last in São Paulo, MAM, all on weekends.

The work of the Santa Catarina duo Gabi Bresola and Mariana Berta takes those who are willing to go to the city of Joaçaba, in the interior of Santa Catarina, to attend the Surungo dance ball, also the title of the artists’ work. They offer the public a 14–hour bus ticket to the location on the bank of Peixe River so that those interested can indulge in the Surungo experience. “Our center is different”, Mariana writes, “it is for this art circuit that we decided to point out, because it could not be different”.

A veteran of the 29 artists and collectives participating in Panorama, Gervane de Paula, a native of Cuiabá, presents three works at the exhibition: Deus Ápis, suas esposas e seu rebanho or O Mundo Animal (2016–2019), set of wood carvings, antlers and crafts; Art, Not Invent (2016); and Arte Aqui Eu Mato (2016), both oil paintings on iron plate. This last one, cover of this edition of ARTE!Brasileiros magazine. The title of the work is a pun on the name of the book of art critic Mato Grosso Aline Figueiredo, Art here is bush, launched in 1990. “Cuiabá, despite being a city far from the major centers, has a strong movement of art, especially of painters. And this book of hers speaks of this abundance of artists,”, he says. But at the same time, the artist realized what he calls “a decay”: “An art that is produced and has no resonance, has no public, its authors live full of privations and, because it is closed, it is very resistant to the new. Arte Aqui Eu Mato can also be the president’s hand, pointing a gun at art, at us, can’t it? ”, he asks.

Gervane uses materials characteristic of the region where he was born and lives, such as barbed wire and the wood of corral posts. “This wood comes with a load of time, a poetic load, because they are posts that have been there for over 10 years suffering the transformations of time. I do not cut down tree to do my works. I collect this old stuff”, he explains.

The video installation Desaquenda (2016–2019), by artist Vulcanica Pokaropa, features 12 channels with testimonials from travesty, transsexual and non–binary people who work in the arts. The work discusses the positioning of these people in institutional spaces and their performance in non marginalized spaces. In addition to the video series, the work also consists of paintings and prints on canvas. The testimonies include artists such as Lyz Parayzo, Rosa Luz (also a participant in Panorama) and Jota Mombaça.

Originally from Ceilândia, Federal District, the artist Antônio Obá brings to Panorama four paintings, one larger, entitled Mama (2019), in which a black woman holds two felines in a maternal gesture, proposing a reflection on the country’s identity, and a series of three other smaller paintings that refer to the black body and traditions, also approaching a religious context. Already the artist Gê Viana, born in Maranhão, exposes three photographs printed as licks and fixed in huge canvas hanging on the ceiling. Retiro de caça ou um outro capelobo (2019), as the work is titled, comes, according to the artist, as she says, “from the need to talk about the things that happened to our people removed from their place of origin”.

She says that when she asked one of her grandparents if the family had an indigenous background, the answer was: “My mother was angry. She was caught in the woods”. From then on, Gê began to question the history of some families in which the constitution took place through violence, such as imprisonment and rape.

 As much as the varied supports, themes or formats of the works that make up the 36th Panorama may make them think that they move away from each other, we must be aware of a strong feature among the 29 participating artists and collectives: they are people who, as Gervane says, chose to take over their region.

 

 

 

Improvisation as a method

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"A Casa da Mãe", de Randolpho Lamonier. Foto: Karina Bacci
“A Casa da Mãe”, de Randolpho Lamonier. Foto: Karina Bacci
*Por Alexia Tala

 

Alexia Tala: When I observe your work I see that there is a deep demand for supports and formats. You use graphic arts, photography, audiovisual, textiles, etc. This versatility makes your work not limited to a particular aesthetic. How is the process in which you choose to work an idea, on one or on another support?

Randolpho Lamonier: Since the beginning of my research on art I have been dealing with a lot of experimentation and the act of improvising has become one of my main working methodologies. It was something that I assimilated completely intuitively as a response to a series of barriers and faults, because when I started producing there was no money for materials, technical knowledge or references from the art world. So I began by observing what was around me and by improvising with the situations my reality offered. This marked in me the feeling that I can work with any material, media or support, as long as there is need and desire.

How and what was the influence that started your artistic doing?

I grew up in Contagem outskirts, in the state of Minas Gerais, in a context where we had no access to virtually any cultural apparatus. I was raised watching TV while my mom was working. I believe that the aesthetics of the blockbusters on Sessão da Tarde, an afternoon tv program showing movies, the sensationalist programs of the Brazilian TV of the years 90 and the video clips of MTV were the first stimulus that could get close to an influence said “artistic”. Still in childhood, I helped my aunt and uncle in a small family business of filming weddings, parties and other events. So the capture and reproduction of image through the VHS was also something that caught my attention.

Later, while I was beginning to explore the field of visual arts, I began to study theater and was soon working in some companies. My short passage by the  Grupo Oficina Multimidia, in Belo Horizonte, was one of my main influences at that time, for its intrinsic relationship with the visual arts and its bold research with videoinstallations, scenic objects, costumes and scenographies. Then I started photographing my friends, almost all from the theater, and the narrative and aesthetic proposals that we created to photograph led me to be interested in photo–performance and video production.

Your process is very interesting. What arises first, the matter or the encounter with the matter?

There is no rule, but in general, first arises a question, then I find the matter, the form and the language through which I will explore it. I ended up coming to an idea of “opposition” that almost always guides my choices, like the bloody chronicles of my memories from Contagem narrated in small handmade embroideries; or the flags of Profecias, made with rags from bedclothes, table linens and towels, to deal with public affairs and social issues related to Brazil. Ultimately, I authorize myself to experiment with any kind of material or process, you learn from your mistakes.

Speaking of Profecias, when I first saw your work, I immediately referred to the recent history of Latin America and the historical and symbolic weight that has the textile use and the embroidery in the works of resistance. What aspects of textiles interest you in your work?

R. L: My contact with the textile started at home watching my grandmother sew. My mother used to work in the industry sewing car seats for Fiat and, well before that, my paternal grandfather was a tailor. But it was after knowing the embroidery of Violeta Parra that I started to be interested in textiles as an expressive possibility. From her work I met the tradition of the Chilean Arpilleras and they impacted me strongly. I felt since then very influenced, especially by the aspect of social and political denunciation that these works demonstrate. Gradually I was acquainted with the work of other artists such as Bispo do Rosário,  Louise Bourgeois, Tracey Emin, Leonilson, Sonia Gomes and Feliciano Centurión, whose influence led me to explore another aspect of textile production, more emotional and affective, when the Intimacy becomes political.

In your work it seems to mix the intimate and private, what happens in personal everyday spaces and what happens on the street. For you there is an undifferentiation between the public and the private that you seek to manifest in the images/works?

I try to explore in the territory of intimate matters everything that may be relevant to the public sphere, and in the same way the contrary, I am involved with public affairs with an often sentimental and cathartic engagement. So that I am always blurting the barriers between these two universes in an attempt to create a third space where I circulate with as much freedom as possible.

Your work talks about violence, oppression and some social struggles related to underdevelopment and marginality. How are you assimilating your work to the current Brazilian situation?

As an artist interested in telling stories and dialoguing with the questions of my time, it would be impossible not to feel totally crossed by the general crisis that Brazil is experiencing. I already had an idea of how the world interferes with my work and now I’m learning in what ways it responds to what I produce. It is a conception of responsibility that has broadened my consciousness in relation to the potency of all that subjectivity can. I am seeking all the desire, irreverence and courage that can be extracted from these days of pure horror.

They always were

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"Judith Slaying Holofernes", de Imri Sandström, 2010

Since 2016, MASP has been articulating its programming around “Histories”, illuminating in this process complex relationships between art and historically deprived social segments. Each year, a theme – such as Histories of Sexuality and Afro–Atlantic Histories – guides the exhibitions and activities organized by the museum. Now it’s women’s turn. Rethinking the relationship between them and the visual arts, shedding light on the uneven structure of the artistic production system, is urgent, necessary and can be done from a multiple approach, as shown by the broad strategy adopted by the museum, which involves debate cycles, monographic exhibitions by leading 20th century artists and print publications. In this process, the work of designing and conducting curatorial research is of fundamental importance. Due to the volume of material and the complexity of the theme, the great show of the year was divided into two extensive and different but complementary assemblies. Women’s Histories: Artists Until 1900 and Feminist Histories: Artists after 2000 are independent, yet integrated, faces of a strategy of mapping the plastic creation of authors at different historical times.

The first of the exhibitions goes back to the past, reveals the perverse process of erasure to which women painters have been subjected for centuries, having been relegated to a position of inferiority in the international art scene, despite having a production capable of rivaling it. in terms of equality with their male peers. The second focuses on the present moment, shows the strategies and clashes of the authors to produce an art capable of dealing with central issues in the contemporary world.

Women’s Histories, which occupies the first floor of the museum, brings together almost 90 works by 50 authors, carried out between the 16th and 19th centuries. The triple curator was in charge of Julia Bryan–Wilson, Lilia Schwarcz and Mariana Leme. The ensemble reveals a scholarly and technical virtue that clashes head–on with the hard evidence attesting to the marginal role for women in art history, such as the fact that most canvases come from private collections (only one of twelve paintings of the first room, dedicated to the sixteenth century, belong to a museum), the disappearance of a significant portion of their work (De Cornelia van der Mijn, for example, there is only one identified work) and the poor visibility of this production.

This impressive set has been mined in various collections around the world and has required a number of displacements, as much of the work has been stored in technical reserves and is not yet available on websites and online collections. MASP’s own collection is an interesting example: from the period covered by the exhibition (prior to 1900), the museum has only three works by female authors. The situation improves as the 20th century enters, but overall there is still a large under–representation, as female participation in the acquis is around 22%.

If in general the set is of great interest, the show becomes even more seductive when the visitor focuses on the trajectory and production of each of these women. Fascinating histories are depicted here, such as Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, who achieved exceptional popularity in the eighteenth century, becoming the first painter of Marie Antoinette, or of Eva Gonzales, the only student, both male and female, accepted by Manet Interwoven with this rich set of works, revealing both individual talents and histories and customs over a wide period of time, the exhibition also contemplated a type of art normally associated with the feminine: textile work. The earliest example of fabric in the show is a pre–Columbian piece dating from the first century. But throughout the show the public can enjoy embroidery from different eras and regions, from the Ottoman empire to the American quilt quilts. The contrast between paintings on one side and fabrics and embroidery – traditionally symbols of the feminine – aim to unmask this place of craftsmanship as a place of women and at the same time contribute to broaden the idea of ​​art. “It is not a question here of understanding feminism as the pursuit of equality in a system of oppression, but of dissolving these hierarchies. Working on gender differences is much more than talking about women”, says Mariana Leme.

 

There is also in contemporary selection an important presence of textile making. The fabric and embroidery weave is now used as a way to overcome the often insidious and masked barriers imposed by patriarchy. Carolina Caycedo, for example, embodies the names of women she admires in clothes she collects from nearby people and makes them big banners. Also present at the show is the wedding dress created by Daspu with sheets of motels in the prostitution zone of Rio de Janeiro, on which erotic designs were printed and which was originally presented at the 27th São Paulo Biennial.

Feminist Histories: Artists after 2000, which occupies the basement of the museum, gathers works by 30 authors, who began their artistic practices as early as this century and that somehow incorporate activist practices. These are works that, in general, “work urgencies from a feminist perspective”, summarizes Isabelle Rjeille. Productions that focus on burning themes, such as the issue of housing in urban centers, as Virginia de Medeiros does, or the issue of transphobia and body vulnerability, addressed by Lyz Parayzo in Bixinha, a collapsible object that also refers to Lygia Clark’s Bichos. In other words, they are artists who extend the critical reach of their poetics beyond gender, showing how the web of invisibility that strikes women is usually associated with other forms of exclusion, related to racial, economic and geopolitical issues. “Feminism goes far beyond art”, recalls Isabelle.

 

 

Artistic practice as historian practice

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Vista da exposição. Foto: Julio Kohl.

“Files alone have no memory. It is with them that you build memory”, says researcher and curator Ana Pato. And in this process of reading, interpretation and meaning of documents and records – traditionally associated with the academic practice of historians and other researchers – artists play a fundamental role, argues Pato, curator of the exhibition Meta–Arquivo: 1964–1985 – Listening and Reading Space of Dictatorship Histories.

Based on this finding, the exhibition at Sesc Belenzinho, created in partnership with the Memorial da Resistência, brings together unpublished works by nine artists, conceived from research in different public and private archives on the Brazilian dictatorship. “Because putting documentation in motion always goes through a mediation process”, says the curator. The mediators in this case are the artists and collectives Ana Vaz, Contrafilé Group, The Whole Group, Giselle Beiguelman, Icarus Lira, Mabe Bethônico, Paulo Nazareth, Rafael Pagatini and Traplev.

The works, in various media and languages, set in motion information and materials that have opened the violence perpetrated by the military regime over 21 years in different areas of national life. The artistic practice emerges – with its peculiarities – as a historian practice, from a desire to make public little known stories and often to question the official historiography. For, as Giselle Beiguelman points out in a work exposed in the show, memory is always a construction. “What did you forget to forget? What did you forget to remember? What did you remember to forget? What did you remember to remember?”, question the phrases written in neons.

Obra de Giselle Beiguelman. Foto: Junior Pacheco

A própria artista, na instalação Gaveta de Ossos, “lembra de lembrar”, através de fotos e áudio, do trabalho de reconhecimento feito com as ossadas na Vala de Perus, onde foram enterrados clandestinamente diversas pessoas assassinadas pela ditadura. Paulo Nazareth, em Inquérito, discute a criminalização dos negros a partir da leitura de inquéritos policiais encontrados pelo artista e transformados em áudios – em trabalho feito em colaboração com Michelle Matiuzzi e Ricardo Aleixo.

Em Escola de Testemunhos, o Grupo Contrafilé reproduz em fones de ouvido – situados em uma “mesa-lousa” rodeada de cadeiras escolares – relatos de ex-presos políticos e seus familiares pertencentes ao arquivo do programa Coleta Regular de Testemunhos do Memorial da Resistência. O trabalho, assim como o de Nazareth, explicita um desejo da exposição de expandir o conhecimento sobre quem foram os personagens atuantes na luta contra a ditadura, como explica Pato: “Quisemos descolar um pouco desse imaginário de que a resistência à ditadura foi feita basicamente por homens, brancos, jovens, de classe média e estudantes da USP que entraram na guerrilha. O trabalho do Contrafilé traz uma visão mais ampla, que inclui o movimento operário, movimento de mulheres e mães da periferia, por exemplo”.

A expansão também da noção geográfica sobre a resistência à ditadura – para além do Sudeste ou de casos famosos como a Guerrilha do Araguaia – se dá no trabalho de Ícaro Lira sobre o Crítica Radical, movimento formado nos anos 1970 em Fortaleza. Atuante ainda hoje, o grupo teve uma trajetória multifacetada, com papel fundamental na luta feminista e passagens pela política institucional, pela guerrilha e, posteriormente, assumindo uma luta contra o voto e o capitalismo.

Trabalho de Rafael Pagatini. Foto: Patricia Rousseaux.

Em outra história pouco conhecida, Rafael Pagatini segue sua pesquisa sobre o papel das instituições culturais durante o regime militar, mostrando meandros das relações entre o governo e três instituições paulistanas: Sesc, MASP e Pinacoteca. Imagens de ditadores em aberturas de exposições impressas em tecidos, por exemplo, revelam como essas instituições ajudavam a dar certo ar de normalidade para o regime – “era como um escudo”, diz o artista –, já que mostras continuavam acontecendo e a arte seguia tendo seu espaço institucional, com aval do governo.

Desenvolvido por Traplev a partir de extensa pesquisa em arquivos – entre eles os que resultaram no livro Brasil: Nunca Mais, realizado clandestinamente por setores da sociedade civil durante os anos finais da ditadura (1979-1985) e que revelou uma série de crimes cometidos pelo regime – a instalação Arma da Crítica/ Orientação para a Prática apresenta dois grandes organogramas, um das organizações de esquerda e outro dos órgãos da repressão, situados em lados opostos da sala expositiva. O artista apresenta ainda um trabalho sobre o educador Anísio Teixeira, morto em 1971 após ser preso por agentes da ditadura.

Em duas grandes instalações feitas em tricô, Texto-Tecido-Teia, O Grupo Inteiro se utiliza de palavras encontrados nas apostilas de formação dos agentes do Serviço Nacional de Informações (SNI). Os manuais, que serviam para orientar a repressão às organizações de esquerda, incluíam dicionários de gírias e expressões que poderiam ser necessárias nas sessões de interrogação e tortura. Logo ao lado, um vídeo da artista Ana Vaz , intitulado Apiyemiyekî? [Por quê?], aborda o genocídio do povo Waimiri-Atroari durante a marcha para o centro-oeste na década de 1970, quando terras indígenas foram invadidas para a construção da BR-174 e para a instalação de uma mineradora. Ilustrações criadas pelos indígenas sobre o período revelam a história traumática vivida pela população, remetendo-nos aos dias atuais.

Trabalho de Mabe Bethônico. Foto: Julio Kohl

The artist herself, at the Gaveta de Ossos installation, “remembers remembering”, through photos and audio, of the reconnaissance work done with the bones in the Perus Ditch, where several people murdered by the dictatorship were clandestinely buried. Paulo Nazareth, in Inquérito, discusses the criminalization of black people by reading police inquiries found by the artist and turned into audios – in work done in collaboration with Michelle Matiuzzi and Ricardo Aleixo.

In Escola de Testemunhos, the Contrafilé Group reproduces on headphones – set on a “blackboard table” surrounded by school chairs – reports from former political prisoners and their families belonging to the Archives of the Memorial da Resistência Regular Witness Collection program. The work, like that of Nazareth, expresses a desire of the exhibition to expand the knowledge about who were the acting characters in the fight against the dictatorship, as Pato explains: “We wanted to take off some of this imagination that the resistance to the dictatorship was basically made. by white, young, middle–class men and USP students who joined the guerrillas. Contrafilé’s work brings a broader view, which includes the workers’ movement, the movement of women and mothers from the periphery, for example”.

The expansion of the geographical notion about resistance to dictatorship – beyond the Southeast or of famous cases such as the Araguaia Guerrilla – also occurs in the work of Ícaro Lira on Crítica Radical, a movement formed in the 1970s in Fortaleza. Active even today, the group had a multifaceted trajectory, with a fundamental role in the feminist struggle and passage through institutional politics, the guerrilla and, subsequently, taking on a struggle against the vote and capitalism.

In another little–known story, Rafael Pagatini follows his research on the role of cultural institutions during the military regime, showing the intricacies of relations between the government and three São Paulo institutions: Sesc, MASP and Pinacoteca. Images of dictators at fabric exhibition openings, for example, reveal how these institutions helped to give the regime a certain air of normality – “it was like a shield”, says the artist – as exhibits kept happening and art went on. having its institutional space, with the approval of the government.

Developed by Traplev from extensive archival research – including those resulting in the book Brasil: Nunca Mais, clandestinely conducted by sectors of civil society during the final years of the dictatorship (1979–1985) and which revealed a number of crimes committed by the regime – Arma da Crítica/ Orientação para a Prática installation features two large organizational charts, one of the left–wing organizations and the other of the repressive organs, located on opposite sides of the lecture hall. The artist also presents a work about the educator Anísio Teixeira, who died in 1971 after being arrested by agents of the dictatorship.

In two large knitting installations, Texto–Tecido–Teia, O Grupo Inteiro uses words found in the training handouts of National Information Service (SNI) agents. The manuals, which served to guide repression of leftist organizations, included slang dictionaries and expressions that might be needed in interrogation and torture sessions. Right next door is a video by artist Ana Vaz entitled Apiyemiyekî? [Por quê?] addresses the genocide of the Waimiri–Atroari people during their march to the Midwest in the 1970s, when indigenous lands were invaded for the construction of BR–174 and the installation of a mining company. Illustrations created by the indigenous about the period reveal the traumatic history lived by the population, referring us to the present day.

Finally, Mabe Bethonica researches the relationship of mining companies with the military dictatorship from a doctoral project he discovered on the subject. The artist invited the author of the research, Ana Carolina Reginatto, to teach her on the subject and recorded the process in videos. The final work, entitled Elite Mineral [Gabinete de Aprendizado] is another that, according to the curator, brings us directly to recent events in the country. “With Mabe’s work, it is clear what is happening in Brumadinho. When you look at Ana Vaz’s work, you better understand what is happening on the indigenous issue. So we are making calls that we don’t seem to make in Brazil”, says Pato.

Revisionism and learning

If the work group created by Ana Pato with the artists to research the memory of dictatorship emerged in 2018, it was from the beginning of this year, after the inauguration of Jair Bolsonaro, that the process of production of the works intensified. The theme went further into the agenda in a context in which the President of the Republic defends the military regime, praises torturers and encourages the commemoration of the date of the 1964 coup. “We are living a moment of revisionism of our official history. Because the military dictatorship is in our official history, it did not seem to be a narrative we had exactly to prove. But things have changed”, says the curator.

“The impression I have is that we are kind of disconnected from who we are, from our nation building. So to understand what we are living, nothing better than looking back, learning from history to be more aware of the present”, she says, reinforcing Meta–Arquivo’s pedagogical role – especially in times of denial of historical facts. and dissemination of false information. No wonder, explains Pato, the show has the subtitle Listening Space and Reading of Dictatorship Histories. “I think the exhibition is a place of learning. It seems to me that if we need to get back to reality, somehow the artist can be this way of the symbolic so that we look back at the real. ”

Vista da exposição. Foto: Julio Kohl.

By making undisclosed stories public, there is also the possibility of some reparation or at least dealing with past wounds. “In Brazil, we did not recognize our debts, our traumatic history. And the genocides of the black, indigenous population, that remains. It’s the very concept of trauma, the past that doesn’t want to go through, what is always coming back”, says Pato. In this sense, the curator refers to a story that begins long before the military dictatorship, with deep roots that come from the arrival of the colonizers and the period of slavery. For her, it is only from this historical complexity that one can understand the current “dualism and split of Brazilian society”.

In a large shed of Sesc Belenzinho, the show presents itself as a space for dialogue between the works, mounted between apparent metal structures and small wooden surfaces, allowing the overlapping of the stories presented. About Anna Ferrari’s expographic project, the curator explains: “It also has to do with the idea of ​​archiving, to pervert the very idea of ​​boxes. I wish I could see any work from any angle. But the point is this: you will never have the perfect angle, you will always have the other side”.

 

Herzog Occupation: going beyond the political drama

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Bebê André. FOTO: Arcervo instituto Vladimir herzog.

VLADO HERZOG was 38 years old when he was killed, under torture, at Doi–Codi’s premises in 1975 in São Paulo. At the time, he was editor of TV Cultura’s Hora da Notícia, and had voluntarily gone to give his testimony. From then on, a farce was set up in an attempt to cover up the murder by turning it into suicide, and a fierce struggle began for the truth to surface, turning the journalist into a kind of symbol against oppression and in defense of democracy. , whose last chapter was the condemnation of the Brazilian State by the OAS Inter–American Court of Human Rights, in 2018. It is to him that Itaú Cultural dedicates the 46th edition of the Occupation project, which has been revisiting the work and biography of major figures of Brazilian culture. The exhibition rightly goes beyond the political drama of the biographer. The starting point is not the dramatic end, but a streak of references to his public and private life, a route that somehow explains why he was brutally treated as an enemy of the regime. It recovers the story of a multifaceted figure, deeply interested in the course of the country at a particularly violent moment in its history and who saw in art, especially in cinema – the field of his greatest interest – a path of action and reflection.

Early on, visitors came across a careful selection of the photographs he was obsessively and rigorously taking. In the family holdings, more than 70 carefully identified slide boxes were found, containing images ranging from personal travel records to experiments of great formal richness, compositions marked by a keen eye, and the use of unusual angles and framings, such as that. which shows his son André, as a baby, in the middle of an intense red rose garden. The woman holding him, probably his wife Clarisse, practically leaves the scene to make the image more intense and disturbing.

This first core, called Vlado Multimedia, also features a series of documents, testimonials from friends and fellow travelers, as well as Herzog’s own writings on cinema, witnessing both real action in this field and journalistic interest in defense. of a social use of language. Unfortunately, he was only able to direct a short film entitled Marimbimbas, but was already preparing to make a documentary about Canudos. Both photos taken during his field research in Bahia and Marimbás are part of the show. The catalog is also dedicated exclusively to his relationship with the cinema.

Her personal life, journalistic work and permanence as a symbol of the struggle against oppression (represented in works such as the action of Cildo Meireles, which stamps money with the question: “Who killed Herzog?”) Constitute the other nuclei of show. Over two years of research, which involved a team of eight researchers, in addition to the staff of Itaú Cultural and the Vladimir Herzog Institute – partners in the production of the show – thousands of data and documents were collected. Scattered throughout the exhibition space, the visitor comes across a wealth of rich elements such as facsimiles of his articles for various vehicles, posters and posthumous books honoring him, important documents relating to the Herzog Case such as the decision of Judge Márcio José de Moraes, who, in 1978, reversed the official version of suicide amid symbolic objects such as his typewriter and camera. Especially touching are items such as the Herzog family’s entry into Brazil in 1946 and a letter his father wrote to him narrating the family’s life during World War II, when they took refuge in Italy fleeing Yugoslavia and anti–Semitism. . Or the photograph of the newsroom of the State of S. Paulo, completely empty, on the day of his burial. A visual testimony to the enormous solidarity and commotion caused by his assassination by the military regime.

“It was a real gold digger. What we see here is just the surface”, says Luis Ludmer of the Herzog Institute and co–curator of the show along with Claudiney Ferreira, manager of the Audiovisual and Literature Center at Itaú Cultural. The idea is that all this material will serve as a basis for the construction of a website in the future, making access to all this volume of material permanent, which tends to become even wider with disclosures such as this one whose function is to It is not only about remembering the past and rescuing the figure of the engaged intellectual, so that he is never forgotten, but also building a model of resistance that is important in times of human rights retreat such as we are experiencing today. “We didn’t want anything funeral”, the curators say. Hence the option for an open museography, with the various nuclei in dialogue, marked by a certain lightness and rusticity.

Photography of the memory

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Foto de João Pina
Foto de João Pina

Whether in Portugal, his homeland, or in the various Latin American countries where he worked, photographer João Pina, 38, has devoted much of his 20 years of career to making “stories not fall into oblivion”. From the family inherited interest in politics – grandparents, communist militants, were political prisoners during the Salazarist regime. He also understood the importance of memory and knowing the past both to understand the present and to repair historical trauma and injustice.

No wonder, Por Teu Livre Pensamento, his first authorial work, was a sort of reckoning with his own history, from records of survivors of political persecution in Portugal. Condor, a project that took nine years to complete and resulted in a book and series of exhibitions around the world, investigated Operation Condor, articulation between six South American military dictatorships (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) organized to suppress leftist opposition.

Other projects came in Portugal, Cuba, Colombia (on the FARC), Rio de Janeiro (46750, which includes the number of homicides in the city between 2007 and 2016), among others. Currently, the photographer develops a work on Tarrafal, a concentration camp created by the Portuguese government in Cape Verde in the 1930s, and begins to address the slave heritage in Portugal. Unfortunately, according to Pina, looking into the past is still a little done work both in Brazil and in her country – although there discussions about colonialism and dictatorship begin to become more present.

In the Brazilian case, most worrying for the photographer, the result is, among others, the election of a president, Jair Bolsonaro, who praises “a torturer who should have been arrested for crimes against humanity”. Moreover, in the case of Rio de Janeiro, “I have no doubt that the fact that the military police kill on average 1,000 people a year has to do with this culture that comes from the dictatorship”, he says.

In each project, from long research and investigation, Pina builds narratives about open or hidden stories, present or past. The violence that appears explicitly in the current scenes of police actions in Rio appears otherwise silent in an empty room that was used for torture sessions in Argentina or on the faces of torture survivors in South American countries.

With an increasing role outside photojournalism, where she began her career, Pina has exhibited, over the years, in museums and galleries, and has published three books. “It’s completely out of my control and I don’t care how the market or academia classifies my work – whether it’s documentary, artistic, journalistic photography. What interests me is storytelling. I can only classify myself as an author who has a voice and things to say”. Read the full interview below:

ARTE!Brasileiros – Many of your projects deal with events of a time you did not live. How to use photography, which captures the present moment, to address these past facts. I mean, what devices did you use and use?

João Pina – Some devices of which I am aware and others not. The work goes through investigation, listening to primary sources to reach clues, places, people and objects, so to speak. I think it has to do with it, studying, researching, interviewing and then understanding how you can tell stories from a visual standpoint. So I will follow the clues of this visualization of the past in the present. And from that I create.

There always seems to be a desire to make public those often forgotten erased stories. Does it make sense to think like that?

Yes, I think this is my mission, to be able to broaden these voices and make these stories not fall into oblivion. This is my major concern, especially at this point in time, when it seems that we are rewriting and reinterpreting history according to who is in government. That to me is very scary.

In 2016, while Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment process was still under way, you said that the fact that Brazil had not discussed its past – and that the Armed Forces and some politicians continued to apologize for the coup – was very worrying because it was sowing the ground so that abuse could happen again. One such politician, Jair Bolsonaro, was elected president. How do you see this moment?

This process of not looking at memory in Brazil is very similar to what happens in Portugal, so it is not strange to me. But I look more concerned at the Brazilian case because I feel that the institutions in Portugal are a little more solid or at least there is less political instrumentalization of the institutions at this time. And this oblivion in Brazil, coupled with other problems of populism – which proposes easy recipes for deep problems – has given us what we are seeing with the election of the Bolsonaro, with a huge polarization and an exponential increase in violence that was thought to be resolved.

Violences inherited from dictatorship?

Because things cannot be resolved by osmosis on their own, they have to be spoken, stirred, remedied, and only then can a process be terminated. In Brazil, as in Portugal, where this resolution process did not exist, many people thought this would be resolved. But the fact is that Brazil continues to have barracks named after the dictators and that we had a deputy, now president, dedicating his impeachment vote to a torturer who should have been arrested for crimes against humanity. And a good part of the population thinks this is normal. So as long as these conditions objectively exist, it is normal for this kind of outcome to happen. The consequences are what we are seeing.

With the amnesty came this idea that one had to forget to move on. Do you really have to remember to move on?

It’s hard to give a recipe. I have read books including the right to forget, not just the right to remember. But I definitely think that ignoring the problem is not a recipe. History must be remembered to understand how things got where they came. And in Brazil this exercise is very little done. This exercise has never been done within the Armed Forces, which continue to argue that there was a liberating revolution that saved Brazil from communism, this bogeyman that eats little children. On the other hand, much of the left has not evolved its speech either. We must not forget that the Workers Party (PT) has been in power for 12 years and has done very little to discuss these issues. There was a National Truth Commission, but what followed it in practice was absolutely nothing. And with the current political landscape, then, it will be less than nothing, the setback, the rewriting of history.

This speech by a government that comes to save the country from communism, from 1964, is very similar to the one that elected Bolsonaro…

Just like in 1964, when it was said that everything was communism. That is, whoever says that everything is communism does not even know what communism is. Communism, fascism, are words that entered the distorted lexicon. Even the left makes this mistake when accusing anyone of fascist. Sometimes it calls fascists people who are neoliberal, which is completely different. But finally, it is a long discussion, which has to do with the lack of political and civic education. We have to think how to overcome this. Brazil suffers greatly from the lack of formal education, so to speak, and history becomes more manipulable. And if many Brazilians, even at school, do not really learn what happened in 1964, in 1968, in the Araguaia Guerrilla, etc., this is worrying.

And in the other South American countries you researched, is the picture very different?

The situations are different. Argentina is a country where these issues are very present, because soon after the dictatorship civil society mobilized a lot – and the victims were also many. So this became the order of the day and there were political conditions for the discussion to proceed. In some ways, it is an exemplary case. I think it would be unthinkable in Argentina for a figure to adopt a speech like Bolsonaro’s about dictatorship and to have such popularity and prominence.

Finally, moving to the 46750 project on violence in Rio de Janeiro, there seems to be a strong dialogue – perhaps not so explicit – with what one sees in Condor, as police violence in Brazil is still a direct remnant of repressive violence of dictatorship. Does it make sense?

It makes perfect sense. I started Condor in 2005 and 46750 in 2007, at a time when I was very focused on understanding these processes of violence, not only from the past but from the present. And very quickly for me this present violence began to show its nuances coming from behind. And in the case of Rio, I have no doubt that the fact that the military police kill on average a thousand people a year has to do with this culture that comes from the dictatorship. In fact, what you see there is also a result of the impunity implemented by the Portuguese when they arrived in Brazil, slavery, and after the military dictatorship. The fact that the Brazilian police is a military police, the one that dies the most and kills the world, does not come from yesterday, but from 500 years.

There is a much present discussion in the artistic universe today about how visual arts can also be a potent device for dealing with history. How do you see this question?

I think that even in academia today there is a growing concern to treat things also outside the text, using visual language for that. And I realized that with Condor. In using images to address this subject, I quickly began to be contacted by teachers and academics, and to be called to lecture on the subject. I think he began to understand better, 200 years after the emergence of photography, the power of visual and the contributions he can make even to the academy, whether in a documentary approach or more artistic, poetic, freer.

Do you believe that art, and more specifically photography, can have some restorative virtue? I mean, for victims of violence as well as for society, can jobs like this that you do have a healing role, too?

I don’t know, maybe it’s too pretentious or utopian to think this way. I don’t think an image itself will heal, heal, or give justice to anyone. But I think that it can contribute, like text, painting and music, to some kind of justice, reparation and better welfare for the victims. And, also, more uneasiness for the guilty, that when they see themselves portrayed they may be able to rethink what their actions were, to realize the consequences of what they did.

Half a century of records

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Foto de Carlos Moreira no Guarujá, 1981

The Retrospectiva Carlos Moreira – Wrong so Well occupies three floors in the Porto Seguro Cultural space, in a torrential caught from the work of the artist who was also a teacher of photography. As such, he attended the School of Communication and Arta at the University of São Paulo (ECA/USP) from 1971 to 1974 and, again, in 1979 to 1990.

In 1990 he created the school of photography M2 Studio, along with Regina Martins who today integrates the team of curator of the exhibition.

The title, Wrong so Well, comes from an annotation made by the artist among his digital photos: “I like when you do it right. But I like much more when you do it wrong so well “.

Moreira is dedicated to authorial photography, street photography, travel photography. His photos are taken with great care, sensitivity and pleasure.

The building of Porto Seguro in the neighborhood of Campos Eliseos, which houses the exposition, has already become one of the important centers of art in São Paulo and the show of Carlos Moreira is the most recent of the 16 exhibitions presented there, series that began with Grandes Mestres –Leonardo, Michelangelo and Rafael, who inaugurated the space at the beginning of 2016.

There are about 400 photos in this retrospective, chosen by the curators Fábio Furtado, Regina Martins and Rodrigo Villela – who is executive and artistic director of Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro –, in a curatorial work that began in January and plunged into the archives of more than 50 years of the photographer’s work.

For the curators the “exhibition was born in front of some considerable challenges yet wonderful… More than 150,000 colorful frames were inventoried–unpublished images that can now be seen by the public for the first time. The black–and–white part, although already catalogued and previously organized, represents another 80.000 frames, approximately. If we add to that its digital production, since the beginning of the years 2000 to date, the volume at least doubles. Not to mention the delightful risk of having a new and extraordinary sequence of images made by Carlos every day, during the process. “.

Born in São Paulo in 1936, Carlos Moreira began photographing at the beginning of the sixties when he enchanted himself with Henry Cartier–Bresson and whose influence he later turned away. Currently the photographer recognizes “a certain ‘ hardness ‘ in Cartier–Bresson that bothers me today, but it was important in my photographic education.”

Moreira graduated from Mackenzie University in Economics and opted for photography in 1964, abandoning the economy.

Known for its analogical photos in black and white, produced in cities where he went, on the walls of Espaço Cultural Porto Seguro are also exposed 250 unpublished photos of his color and digital phases. Divided into cores, the exhibition gathers from the photos from the beginning of the career to recent digital images. Carlos Moreira has exhibited in Paris (1983), Washington (1986) and New York (1988). His photos are in collections like the Pompidou.

Also interesting are their technical choices, at this time where the dizzying technological transition that has been blowing us for decades, in addition to the said progress, provokes also discussions where neither icons are spared. Recently Sebastião Salgado provoked buzz on social networks by shooting that, for him the “images from celular phones are not photography”.

The work of Carlos Moreira comes to light through cameras and techniques chosen in a healthy eclectic manner.

He shoots with Leicas, analogical and digital, with the very practical Canon Powershot and also with the even fewer complex celular phones. His photos are printed in black and white, in color and on various media that include even Cicero and Moleskine notebooks. And in this is important the phrase included in the expography of the show:

“… It is clear that for him the heart of photography is not in the device itself, but in what he provides to the artist in his relationship with the world.

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