On the façade of Vermelho, the mural painting reproduces a signpost for the presence of landmines in war zones. The title plays with the danger of minefields and with the expression “minas”, which in Portuguese is a double entendre designating both girls (girls from the hood) and also landmines.

Portas [Doors], 2020, is a series of seven paintings of white doors on A4 sheets of sulfite paper, on whose back the artist had printed images of weapons used in the series Espiãs [Spies], (2020), where Longo Bahia portrays female spies whose main profession was not “being a spy”. They were public figures – actresses, singers, athletes, media stars, socialites – who worked undercover to help their countries or their causes. The paintings are mounted in pivoting metal frames that allow viewing from both sides

Dora Longo Bahia preparing the installation Explosão Plástica (Inevitável) [Exploding Plastic (Inevitable)], 2022. The mural painting depicts an explosion spreading across the walls of the room overlapping sets formed by wooden boards and white canvases. Some of these boards are work tables from her studio and some are tables from projects carried out by the artist and the study group she tutors, Depois do fim da arte [After the end of Art]. The boards are full of marks from works with scars from the use of paint and craft knife.

In the installation Explosão Plástica (Inevitável) [Exploding Plastic (Inevitable)], 2022, a mural painting, depicting an explosion spreading across the walls of the room overlaps sets formed by wooden boards and white canvases. Some of these boards are work tables from her studio and some are tables from projects carried out by the artist and the study group she tutors, Depois do fim da arte. The boards are full of marks from works with scars from the use of paint and craft knife.

In the installation Explosão Plástica (Inevitável) [Exploding Plastic (Inevitable)], 2022, a mural painting, depicting an explosion spreading across the walls of the room overlaps sets formed by wooden boards and white canvases. Some of these boards are work tables from her studio and some are tables from projects carried out by the artist and the study group she tutors, Depois do fim da arte. The boards are full of marks from works with scars from the use of paint and craft knife.

In the installation Explosão Plástica (Inevitável) [Exploding Plastic (Inevitable)], 2022, a mural painting, depicting an explosion spreading across the walls of the room overlaps sets formed by wooden boards and white canvases. Some of these boards are work tables from her studio and some are tables from projects carried out by the artist and the study group she tutors, Depois do fim da arte. The boards are full of marks from works with scars from the use of paint and craft knife.

Juliana Frontin in the sound presentation during the opening of Perigo! [Danger!]

Juliana Frontin in the sound presentation during the opening of Danger!.
November 16, 2022.

Exhibition view of Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)] – a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Exhibition view of Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)] – a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022.

The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine.

In this series, Dora Longo Bahia uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Portrait of actress Camila Mota.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022.The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine.

In this series, Dora Longo Bahia uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Portrait of the visual artist Flávia Ribeiro

Minas (trabalho em andamento), 1964-2022, é uma série em andamento que emprega desenhos criados por Dora Longo Bahia entre os anos de 1964 e 1973 como suporte material na composição de um conjunto em andamento de retratos de mulheres importantes em sua trajetória artística. A partir de 2021, Dora passa a utilizar seus desenhos de infância como base para retratar amigas, artistas, curadoras, professoras e historiadoras da arte, na série que, até o momento, conta com 155 retratos.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022.

The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine.

In this series, Dora Longo Bahia uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Portrait of vistual artist Nazareth Pacheco.

Exhibition view of Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)] – a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022.

The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine.

In this series, Dora Longo Bahia uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

In this photo and portrait: the visual artist and professor Lúcia Koch.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Exhibition view of Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)] – a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022. The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine. In this series, she uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Minas (trabalho em andamento) [Girls / Mines (work in progress)], is a series of portraits produced between 1964 and 2022.

The title is a double entendre the Portuguese language where Minas mean both a young girl (a girl from the hood) and a landmine.

In this series, Dora Longo Bahia uses her own childhood drawings done between 1964 and 1973 as support in the composition of an ongoing series of portraits of women who are important to her artistic trajectory. The set, so far, contains 155 portraits.

Portrait of the visual artist Rochelle Costi.

Dora Longo Bahia has been producing portraits, especially of women, since the late 1980s. In the Desconhecida [unknown] series from 1996, Longo Bahia depict murdered women, not identified by the police, based on photographic images provided by the Legal Medical Institute of São Paulo (IML) and from multiple visits to the same Institute.

One of Dora Longo Bahia’s main concerns in her work from the late 80s, early 90s, are the often invisible acts of violence against women in their own homes.

In this series of oil paintings, entitled Desconhecida (the feminine version of Unknown), the artist depicts bodies of women killed during acts of domestic violence. The research for these images were done in the Forensic Medicine Institute of São Paulo (Institúto Médico Legal, São Paulo).

In Circassian Beauties, Longo Bahia portrays 50 Circassian women. Circassians are an ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region, and these women were considered by bourgeoise western society in the 19th century as extraordinarily beautiful and elegant. After the Circassian Genocide (1763-1864), which ended 90% of this ethnic group, Circassian women became objects of desire in Western circuses, which featured women dressed as Circassians, and who were also exploited as concubines or slaves. Longo Bahia’s Circassian Beauties are constructed with digital negatives mounted on mirrors, simulating glass negatives.

In Circassian Beauties, Longo Bahia portrays 50 Circassian women. Circassians are an ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region, and these women were considered by bourgeoise western society in the 19th century as extraordinarily beautiful and elegant. After the Circassian Genocide (1763-1864), which ended 90% of this ethnic group, Circassian women became objects of desire in Western circuses, which featured women dressed as Circassians, and who were also exploited as concubines or slaves. Longo Bahia’s Circassian Beauties are constructed with digital negatives mounted on mirrors, simulating glass negatives.

In Circassian Beauties, Longo Bahia portrays 50 Circassian women. Circassians are an ethnic group originating in the North Caucasus region, and these women were considered by bourgeoise western society in the 19th century as extraordinarily beautiful and elegant. After the Circassian Genocide (1763-1864), which ended 90% of this ethnic group, Circassian women became objects of desire in Western circuses, which featured women dressed as Circassians, and who were also exploited as concubines or slaves. Longo Bahia’s Circassian Beauties are constructed with digital negatives mounted on mirrors, simulating glass negatives.

Corpo Político [Political Body], 2021, is a video produced for the program Political Bodies, Gender and Race, for the virtual conference WORLDVIEWS : Latin American Art and the Decolonial Turn, held at the Centre for Visual Culture of the University of Cambridge. The work, originally shown as a videoconference, is divided into chapters: the Introduction includes excerpts from an audiobook version of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). Chapter I focuses on Western Civilization [the head (mind or spirit) vs. the body]; chapter II on Colonization [the “human being” (or the “civilized” white man) vs. the other], chapter III on Power [the phallus (or the State) vs. her], chapter IV on Rape (the male subject vs. the female object), chapter V on the Reified Body (body vs. flesh), chapter VI on the Collective Body (the system vs. the “numerous”), and chapter VII on Revolution.
Duration: 18′

Corpo Político [Political Body], 2021, is a video produced for the program Political Bodies, Gender and Race, for the virtual conference WORLDVIEWS : Latin American Art and the Decolonial Turn, held at the Centre for Visual Culture of the University of Cambridge.

The work, originally shown as a videoconference, is divided into chapters: the Introduction includes excerpts from an audiobook version of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651). Chapter I focuses on Western Civilization [the head (mind or spirit) vs. the body]; chapter II on Colonization [the “human being” (or the “civilized” white man) vs. the other], chapter III on Power [the phallus (or the State) vs. her], chapter IV on Rape (the male subject vs. the female object), chapter V on the Reified Body (body vs. flesh), chapter VI on the Collective Body (the system vs. the “numerous”), and chapter VII on Revolution.

Autobiografia obscena [Obscene Autobiography], 2022, is a video created for the Latin American Speaker Series (LASS) hosted by Sur Gallery (Toronto, Canada) in May 2022. In the video, initially shown as a videoconference, images and sounds from various works by Longo Bahia are superimposed or juxtaposed. A female voice narrates a story created from the appropriation and collage of texts from different authors. The text was translated into Portuguese for the audio with English subtitles. The title Autobiografia obscena is the result of the mutilation and appropriation of two of the texts used in the video: Autobiography of Red, by Canadian Anne Carson, and A obscena senhora D [The Obscene Lady D], by Brazilian Hilda Hilst.
Duration 22’40’’

Autobiografia obscena [Obscene Autobiography], 2022, is a video created for the Latin American Speaker Series (LASS) hosted by Sur Gallery (Toronto, Canada) in May 2022. In the video, initially shown as a videoconference, images and sounds from various works by Longo Bahia are superimposed or juxtaposed. A female voice narrates a story created from the appropriation and collage of texts from different authors. The text was translated into Portuguese for the audio with English subtitles. The title Autobiografia obscena is the result of the mutilation and appropriation of two of the texts used in the video: Autobiography of Red, by Canadian Anne Carson, and A obscena senhora D [The Obscene Lady D], by Brazilian Hilda Hilst.
Duration 22’40’’

Longo Bahia has been producing Calendars from her paintings in recent years.

In Revolutions, each month is illustrated by a revolution that took place in that period.

Graphic Design Regina Araki.

Calendar for the year 2022. The Black Flag series is composed of images of contemporary groups struggling against the living conditions determined by capitalism. If the white flag represents surrender, the black flag represents resistance. The black flag is used by anarchists since at least 1883 when Louise Michel raised a black flag during a demonstration against unemployment in Paris, shouting: “bread, work or bullets”. Black Flag is also the name of an American hardcore band, formed in 1976 by Greg Ginn, promoting the do-it-yourself punk ethic and aesthetic.

Calendar for the year 2023, with images of women involved in armed combat. Each portrait illustrates the month of the portrayed’s birthday.

In Autorretrato desviado [Deviated Self-Portrait], 2021, Longo Bahia made 11 portraits, in hues of green and yellow, of women who do not follow the absolutism of beauty standards maintained by cosmetic interventions.

In the seriesAutorretrato desviado [Deviated Self-Portrait], 2021, Longo Bahia made 11 portraits, in hues of green and yellow, of women who do not follow the absolutism of beauty standards maintained by cosmetic interventions.

Portrait of Angela Davis

In the seriesAutorretrato desviado [Deviated Self-Portrait], 2021, Longo Bahia made 11 portraits, in hues of green and yellow, of women who do not follow the absolutism of beauty standards maintained by cosmetic interventions.

In the seriesAutorretrato desviado [Deviated Self-Portrait], 2021, Longo Bahia made 11 portraits, in hues of green and yellow, of women who do not follow the absolutism of beauty standards maintained by cosmetic interventions.

In the series Who’s Afraid of Red? (2000), Dora Longo Bahia paints a group of images that refer to her personal memories: from photos in family albums to, as seen here, portraits of friends.

The images acquire a whitish appearance, which alludes to a memory deformed by time or perception. To these paintings were added marks, cuts and scratches: aggressive interventions in red.

The title of the series was inspired by the attack suffered by the work Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, by the American artist Barnett Newman. In March 1986, Gerard Jan Van Bladeren entered the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and used a box cutter to tear eight incisions into Newman’s painting.

In the series Who’s Afraid of Red? (2000), Dora Longo Bahia paints a group of images that refer to her personal memories: from photos in family albums to, as seen here, portraits of friends.

The images acquire a whitish appearance, which alludes to a memory deformed by time or perception. To these paintings were added marks, cuts and scratches: aggressive interventions in red.

The title of the series was inspired by the attack suffered by the work Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, by the American artist Barnett Newman. In March 1986, Gerard Jan Van Bladeren entered the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and used a box cutter to tear eight incisions into Newman’s painting.

Nome ao ar é um objeto instalado no pátio da galeria.

Um moinho catavento, cujas 18 hélices têm inscrições em serigrafia de um conjunto de adjetivos que remetem a modos de extermínio de corpos LGBTs, que, ao longo da história, tem seus substantivos próprios sublimados e massificados.

Assim, entre termos como “arremessados”, “empalados”, “fuzilados” e “suicidados”, que nomeiam aniquilamentos de ontem e em curso, também gira, de acordo com a intensidade do vento que circula pelo pátio, a palavra “vi-vos”, grafada assim, hifenizada pela sílaba tônica.

Letter to the wind is a sound piece that composes an installation alongside Nome ao ar. It is a letter addressed to Tibira do Maranhão, a Tupinambá man who was sentenced to death by cannon in 1612 or 1613, being the first victim of homophobia recorded on Brazilian soil. The proposal is that the wind energy generated by the windmill runs the audio, which unfolds one of the main axes of the artist’s current research, which is proposing texts in which historical times are mixed, inserting the listener into a joint exercise of political imagination.

Sound piece, 5’

photo: Amanda Melo da Mota

[One Pledge, Another Payer]. In this dual-channel video work, on one of the screens Elilson is seen descending on his knees, step by step, the staircase of the Catedral da Sé, in São Paulo, and, on the other, the perspective of a GoPro camera reveals a poem being written in chalk. The artist is revisiting another performance, his first in the city of São Paulo, as a visitor, in 2016: he inscribed on the steps of the Catedral the poem À Memória de um Francisco [To the memory of a Francisco], by his friend and poet Jonatas Onofre, written in tribute to Francisco Erasmo Rodrigues de Lima, who, in September 2015, on the eve of the Independence holiday, gave his life to save an unknown woman held as hostage by a kidnapper. The tribute to the man who had his anonymous life converted into public death, televised in real time, was made in a haste by the artist, fulfilling a promise made to the poet, that he would transform the text into action. Now, in 2022, the action gains other narrative layers, though located on the same staircase, a historical heritage in which monumentality and impunity intertwine to highlight the histories of the “jaw-city” postcards.

Author of cited poem: Jonatas Onofre
Audio and vídeo: Lorena Pazzanese

A cart measuring 2.75m in length and 1.70m in height with 6 iron handles on one side and a mirror on the other, containing the phrase “History never presents itself directly”, circulated around the Avenida Paulista. The pullers/performers wore gray shirts in which letters stamped on the back formed the words O outro [The other]. The original phrase – “The other never presents itself directly” – collected by the artist from a printed text by the philosopher Merleau-Ponty found on the street, is put into play with the variation “History”, echoing one of Elilson´s main practices: walking backwards collectivly as a desecration of the first and absolute expression of order and progress: walking forwards. The cart, the video recording of the action and the set of t-shirts form the exhibition’s installation nucleus.

A cart with 6 handles on one side and a mirror on the other, containing the phrase “History never presents itself directly”, circulated around Avenida Paulista (São Paulo). The pullers/performers wore gray shirts in which letters stamped on the back formed the words The other. The original phrase – “The other presents itself directly” – collected by the artist from a printed text by the philosopher Merleau-Ponty found on the street, is put into play with the variation “History”, echoing one of Eilson’s main practices: walking backwards collectivly as a desecration of the first and absolute expression of order and progress: walking forwards.

A Invenção do Sudeste [The Invention of the Southeast]. In this object, a cargo cart in platform model has a cement base and a neon sign with the word “Regionalism”.

Slanted diagonally, inserted on the cement like a tombstone, the word ignites a play of ideas present in a year marked by ephemeris and regional debates made official as national by the fact that they are historically located on the São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro axis.

If the word in neon still represents a term insistently used to “classify” the art coming from or produced outside of this axis, the materials used in the work provoces a dialoge with two regional marks of southeastern art.

[Even a right clock is broken twice a day]. In this 8’ video, an everyday and affective collecting is projected: a walking-search for broken public clocks. Restricted to the function of decorative artifacts or ignored by a frantic and incessant mass that has become used to not noticing the façades of the buildings, these clocks, located in business establishments, public institutions and uninhabited buildings, seem to testify, with their stagnant hands and on strike against official hours, that time is an invention. In the title, changing the order of the terms “right” and “broken” in the popular expression, the artist highlights the uncertainty and paralysis of time, thinking above all of a popular custom today as lost as the function of the clocks: stopping its hands whenever someone dies.

Nome ao ar é um objeto instalado no pátio da galeria.

Um moinho catavento, cujas 18 hélices têm inscrições em serigrafia de um conjunto de adjetivos que remetem a modos de extermínio de corpos LGBTs, que, ao longo da história, tem seus substantivos próprios sublimados e massificados.

Assim, entre termos como “arremessados”, “empalados”, “fuzilados” e “suicidados”, que nomeiam aniquilamentos de ontem e em curso, também gira, de acordo com a intensidade do vento que circula pelo pátio, a palavra “vi-vos”, grafada assim, hifenizada pela sílaba tônica.

[…] The stuffing was all white paper carefully cut to the size of banknotes. Folded with less care than we use when it is necessary to separate by color, hugged by an identical elastic band. A cake of flour. […]

excerpt from The Tent, by Carla Zaccagnini.
^{part of Cuentos de Cuentas, published by K. Verlog and commissioned by Amant, 2022.}

La plata y el plomo (Cash and lead) – São Paulo, 2021- 2022, is a mobile constructed with objects used to hide money. A cigar box, a battery-operated toy, a flashlight, a book – all hiding devices that the artist has been collecting and also mentions in the different accounts in the book which lends its title to the show (original title in Spanish: Cuentos de cuentas). With their weight altered by lead hidden between the banknotes, the objects create an arbitrary equilibrium, like those that structure and move the economy.

The Fleeting Fleet installation, 2021-2022, is composed of a collection of banknotes from American countries that have been out of circulation since 1973, the year Zaccagnini was born. These are not withdrawn notes that have been replaced by new notes of greater value and new design; they are extinct banknotes. In these notes with no monetary value, just pieces of paper, folded like little boats, the social and political experience of money as a catalyzing praxis of domination becomes evident.

The Fleeting Fleet installation, 2021-2022, is composed of a collection of banknotes from American countries that have been out of circulation since 1973, the year Zaccagnini was born. These are not withdrawn notes that have been replaced by new notes of greater value and new design; they are extinct banknotes. In these notes with no monetary value, just pieces of paper, folded like little boats, the social and political experience of money as a catalyzing praxis of domination becomes evident.

Accounts of Accounting, 2020-2022, is a 5-channel video installation in which choreographies made for hands accompany the narrative of the short stories The Shack, True or False, The Vest, The Pot, and Black Dollars. Written by Zaccagnini, these tales are also part of the book Cuentos de cuentas [Accounts of accounting] published by Amant and K Verlag, Berlin. Each episode of the installation is structured around a specific object – a tent, a flask, or a vest – suggesting a secret economic transaction. Although told with a childlike innocence and detailed attention to material reality, the stories illuminate a context where the US dollar dictated, as it still dictates, the world economy.

Choreography and performance
Marina Dubia

Camera
Petra Bindel

Music
Søren Kjaergaard

Special participation
León Zaccagnini Lagomarsino

1 – The Tent

“What color was the tent we traveled with to the south?” I asked. “It was an army tent,” he replied. Green, I thought, olive-green. Or military green. The next question would have been, “How did an army tent end up in our possession in 1977?” I didn’t ask.

I imagine it might have belonged to his brother Jorge, my uncle. Jorge died young, of cirrhosis, and the memories I have of him are few and discolored, yet vigorous. I remember seeing him spinning around an imaginary axis starting at the top of his head and ending between his two feet in order to roll up the belt of the impeccable gaucho trousers that he used to wear on the farm. I remember following the delicate and precise movements of his hands for days on end, when he was building an extremely complex kite in the shape of a bird—an eagle, I think—while my maternal grandfather, following instructions from the same book and using materials that the main project discarded, made a pink star with my name on it. “Carla,” in leaf-green. It was behind a bed in the farm for years—the star, not the eagle. The eagle had a short life. It couldn’t gain height on the first attempt and neither on the second, and there wasn’t a third one. Jorge walked firmly towards the place where it landed and trampled on it until there was nothing that could be recognized in the remaining mixture of eagle, earth, and grass.

Jorge used to collect weapons and practiced shooting; I recall he once hurt his own knee when trying to hit a can. I think I remember when he invited some friends in uniform to the farm. Army-green. I remember seeing him break the blade of a carving knife in half, with his bare hands; it happened during a fight with my grandmother that I followed from a stool in the kitchen. My cousin remembers another fight—or, maybe it was the same fight seen from another angle and stored by another memory—in which our uncle drove a knife through the pullover our grandmother was wearing. Every time I was alone with her, my grandmother would want to tell me about her youngest son. “I remember,” my grandmother would say again and again, “the last time I saw Jorge entering through that door.” And she would point at the door of the dining room in the house where she lived, and where we had lived before her. I remember (I do) the night when my father woke me, telling me that Jorge had died. My mother was traveling, and he cried alone, even though I would have liked to accompany him.

Shortly after, we found out that he used to write poetry.

***

We traveled south with a tent. The idea was to go as far as Ushuaia. My father drove a Renault 6—light green—with a hole in the place where my mother would otherwise have rested her feet. I sat in the back—surrounded by luggage, I imagine. Not only the pieces we brought with us from Buenos Aires but also those we must have accumulated along the way. Among other things, we had a 20-liter canister filled with gasoline. I still know how it smelled and the sound it made each time the liquid hit the plastic, like a delayed reflex after every curve or bump. It proved useful the day we got lost driving on the Patagonian Meseta towards the Road of the Seven Lakes. Everything around us was flat, and we didn’t pass a single soul. Only by nightfall, when he climbed onto the car’s roof, did my father see one light on the horizon. We drove towards it. It was a house by a lake. Its single inhabitant took fuel from his own boat to feed our car and showed us the way.

I heard this for the first time the other day, when I asked about the color of the tent, the model of the car, and the trajectory of our trip. What I always get to hear is the anecdote that supposedly proves how I, already at age four, wasn’t made for camping.

It is said that I fell ill and was taken to a doctor in the first village that appeared on our way. It was called Tres Plumas (Three Feathers)—or possibly Tres Chapas (Three Plates). The waiting room was lugubrious—I think this is where I learned the word, or maybe it was when we were already back and tried to describe where we had been. In my mind, the illustration of “lugubrious” will always be the waiting room of a village doctor who doesn’t like natural light. My father wanted to open the curtains to let the sunlight in. The receptionist refused. “The doctor doesn’t like it,” she said. We left. In the next village, called Tres Chapas (Three Plates)—or most likely Tres Plumas (Three Feathers), we met a pediatrician who didn’t shun light. After examining me, she concluded that all I needed was to spend a few days in the same place. It is told (insistently so) that when we entered the hotel room at the Automobile Club in Trelew, I jumped on the mattress shouting: “A bed! A bed!” “A bed,” my father invariably repeats it in a high-pitched voice.

***

I always thought this was the reason why they had decided to sell the tent (which, until recently, I imagined to be red and blue). But it turned out to be different; the army tent was kept in the family. Until a few years ago, Jorge still had it. This is my other uncle Jorge, my mother’s brother—the mountain climber—who now lives in La Cumbre (The Summit).

The tent this story is about, however, never came from or went to any Jorge. Because this story is not about my relationship to camping and hotels. Neither is it about the coincidence of having two uncles with the same name who have always been like two opposite sides of a mirror. Neither is it about flying kites or driving south. This story is about the selling of a tent, but as I was presenting it as the military tent, I found out it was actually another.

The tent for sale belonged to the Bergeret family. My friend and schoolmate Magdalena’s father, Bernardo, had asked my father to sell it—because “Guillermo was an expert.” Their tent had hardly been used. Maybe the Bergeret kids also preferred hotel rooms. None of this I remember. In fact, I rebuilt the story from scattered pieces of badly kept information: the collateral clues I got when asking about the color of the first tent and those I gathered in a few other triangulated messages. This second tent does not have a color. I don’t think I ever saw it opened. Magdalena said, “It could have been cream,” though it could also have been red and blue.

Guillermo placed an announcement in a weekly paper called Segunda Mano [Second Hand], which, if I am not mistaken, used to be published on Mondays (or Tuesdays). Years later, the same Bernardo took a copy of this paper with him on one of his frequent business trips to Rio de Janeiro. He threw it on a friend’s desk and said, “Look, I brought you an idea.” The friend, or one of this friend’s friends, then started publishing the equivalent in Brazil—it was called Primeira Mão [First Hand] and was issued on Tuesdays (or Mondays). The title of the Brazilian version was a euphemism, as both publications were dedicated to announcing used objects for sale.

The first to come and see the tent was a man who, at that time, seemed big. He had one hand in plaster and a briefcase in the other. A hard-shell attaché with a code, like the ones used back then by businessmen and spies. He also had a nephew with him. He liked the tent (it’s possible that we saw it open after all). He gave her a closed envelope. I followed the conversation from a distance; interested but wanting to pass unnoticed.

I remember seeing my mother taking the bills out of the envelope and counting them at the kitchen table. Her expression was that of someone wanting to appear as having done this before, as if this time wasn’t more than simply once more. I can still picture her polished nails, her attentive eyes, her lips moving fast but little, letting a flow of thin air escape, sounding more like wind than like numbers. I can still hear each note evoking a partial result instead of its own name; each bill added to all the previous ones and waiting for the next to come, like a link in a chain. I still sense the sound of the paper raising and stretching, detaching itself and then leaning against the bundle again. She counted without unfolding them, without undoing the wad of bills, without shuffling the color order. Just like the way in which each different layer in a cake has its own taste and texture, so also does each layer of color in a well-built stack of bills have its own density and sweetness. Tsssfts tssscfst trssstsffs trssstvtcs, and, finally, the sound of the agreed sum. The money then disappeared back in the envelope.

“Very well, thank you, I will show you to the door.” The man took the briefcase from the kitchen table with his healthy hand. The nephew took the tent.

I think I also followed them to the door. And when we came back my mother opened the envelope, held the wad, and noticed that it wasn’t the same anymore. The man who then seemed big to me had taken the bills that had been caressed by my mother’s fingers and named by the wind coming from her lips. As in a magic trick, a sleight of hand, he had transformed those notes into others, into a stack with only one real bill, the one on the outside. The filling was made of white papers, carefully cut into the size of banknotes. They were folded with less precision than when separated by color and embraced by an identical rubber band—a cake made of nothing but flour.

My mother ran to the door, unlocked it, opened it, and looked down the street in both directions. They were nowhere to be found. Gone. Gone the man who probably wasn’t that big after all; gone the briefcase that may have had a false bottom; gone the arm that may have been healthy and strong; gone the young man who instead of a nephew may have been an associate (or a lover). Gone the tent, which may not have had the colors of the French flag. Gone the money with its volume and smell.

Carla Zaccagnini

2. True or False

Between the kitchen and the dining room, there was a hall with a beige, pinkish floor (or maybe light green with black corners) from where one could enter five different doors. On one side, the door to the kitchen and that of my room, the windows of which had a view towards the garden. On the other side, the doors to the dining room and my parents’ bedroom, with windows looking out to the central patio. In the middle was the door to the bathroom, in front of which were two stairways. One was big, full of light, made of white marble and leading to the second floor. The other one was dark, narrow, finished in raw cement and leading down to the basement.

I was once coming down from the second floor, when I heard my mother’s exalted voice arguing with the woman who then worked in the house a few days a week. I think she had lost a silver bracelet and was accusing the closest suspect, probably without reason. Offended, I suppose, to be accused of this and who knows how many other reasonless claims; cornered, or perhaps feeling powerless for being unable to prove her innocence; the woman said, quite calmly: “If I would want to, I could make your daughter fall down the stairs.” I took a false step and rolled down the last six or five steps, surrounded by white marble. We never saw her again. The bracelet, on the other hand, reappeared a few days later.

The other stairs, the ones I almost never used, led to a basement with a persistent smell of mold. I didn’t like the place at all. It felt lonely and full of ghosts. I remember going down the whole way only once, accompanied by the familiar voices and laughter that rose from the underground. I saw my father’s back and his friend Jorge, who was almost like an uncle, looking at him with the face he used to wear for parties. In every basement or cave, ghosts are compensated with treasure trunks.

In this case it was cardboard boxes. And they were not filled with precious stones and noble metal, carrying the brightness and the sound they carry in films. Inside the boxes were these little black machines: personal, portable, and newly fabricated. Each came in a leather case designed for easy access, they could be quickly opened and closed with Velcro, and worn on one’s belt. The machine set comfortably in an adult hand and could be turned on and off with a simple movement of the thumb. When running over bank bills with the ideal pressure and speed, they would react to the minuscule metal particles present in the ink used to print dollars, and reveal, by means of a tiny robotic light, if the paper treasure was true or false.

Carla Zaccagnini

3. The Vest

In the 1980s it was fashionable to wear puffy jackets that looked like they were inflated. Sometimes they were stuffed with feathers or artificial substitutes, but they could also be filled with nothing, and just have air between the skin and the nylon. My mother had one—a light one—without a filling or lining, I think. It had three wide horizontal stripes in the colors of the French flag: liberty, equality, and fraternity. She liked it, as she did with everything that had to do with that country: Charles Aznavour, the nouvelle vague, chicken à la crème, duck à l’orange, rabbit à la mode de Dijon, and Lacan’s seminars.

The days before the trip were hectic. My grandmother had installed herself with her sewing machine in the kitchen of our house, already getting used to occupying the spaces she would later inhabit. You could hear the rhythm of the needle when she pushed down the pedal. And when she didn’t, you could hear her voice commenting, giving advice, or reciting rhymes. It was the same constant tone in the voice as in the machine.

I would walk along the lines that the sea-green tiles drew on the floor¬¬—or rather, along the lines that were drawn on the floor between the sea-green tiles—insisting on the thought that I would like to have a sister. Sometimes I said it and repeated it out loud, which filled the atmosphere with a certain discomfort that I, without fully understanding, was drawn to explore. I also spoke of numbers, made sums, and imagined being older.

My mother would come in and out, passing fluidly from one environment to another, not in a rush but in continuous movement. She went down the white marble stairs, her arms full of clean laundry, too dry and a little rough because of long exposure to the sun on the roof terrace. She opened the fridge, filled a glass of water, answered my grandmother, closed the fridge. She searched in drawers, she packed the suitcase. She crossed the hallway, opened my closet, crossed the hallway, packed the suitcase. The glass was sweating.

Every once in a while, almost without entering the kitchen, she would try on the vest. The paper pattern. The necessary adjustments. The cut of the back in the lining fabric—in a neutral shade called “skin color.” The back, the double fabric. The pins. The chest. The necessary adjustments. The double fabric. The stitching drew lines like the tiles in the floor. Or rather: it was the opposite of the tiles, which leave empty lines where there are none. The stitches drew lines in the path where the needle would fixate the thread, separating empty spaces between the double fabric.

It was in those pockets—closed on four sides and evenly sized like the tiles—that the filling would go. In each partition 30 bills of 100. Enough money to pay for the second half of the house with a pool, a condition imposed by my mother in order to move to the tropics.

On top of the vest, a dark t-shirt; on top of the t-shirt, the nylon jacket in the colors of France. On top of everything, silence. The secret. Few things could not be told: the story of the burned newspapers and the story of the vest.
In the left hand, the suitcase; in the right hand, my left hand. In my right hand, my handbag. In the purse, the tickets, the passports, the wallet, the cigarettes. In the doorway, the goodbye. Afterwards, the line, the tickets, the fear of flying. The boarding call, the line, passport control, the metal detector, the fear of flying. In my left hand, her hand was sweating.

Carla Zaccagnini

4. The Jar

The house in São Paulo–the house with the pool–had an outlet with a hidden safe. What looked like the neutral, the hot slot, or the ground, was in actual fact a lock. It was possible to take out the entire metal box from the wall by turning a long nail. And in that hole was the key that would open the box to reveal what we had learned to call “the burglar’s dollars.” The idea was that, in case of an armed robbery, and after a certain resistance the length of which had to be defined in situ, the contents of this safe would be surrendered.

Meanwhile, the true treasure was much better concealed. The savings, in US dollars and some German marks, were rolled up in cylinders of the same height and different thickness, and stuffed inside a plastic jar with a screw cap that I recall to be red, sealed with silicone. The jar was buried, like a good treasure, in a hole covered with a fine layer of cement. It was hidden underneath the bidet in my parents’ suite. The bathroom, in turn, was accessible through a door that was behind another door. Almost a secret passage: it was a wall with closets, the third wardrobe was a hallway.

The bathrooms of this house were enormous, almost the size of the bedrooms. And back then they still had the floors, tiles, and artifacts chosen by the previous inhabitants at the end of the 1970s. In the master bathroom the tiles on the floor were brick color, and those on the walls were bright orange, more intense at the edges and subdued in the center. They had white arabesque decorations made with little white dots similar to sesame seeds in relief. That early morning, I found them covered in torn dollars.

My maternal grandmother used to dry the handkerchiefs like this. She washed them and put them on the bathroom walls, stretching them with the pressure of her long fingers. Because of the water, they stuck to the tiles and became “so well ironed,” she said. She would say this with a hidden sense of pride, with a smile that wasn’t common on her face. It was the subdued pride a scientist may display when explaining to a colleague, in a bar, the enviable results of an experiment about which he doesn’t want to brag but which he can’t resist to partially reveal among other themes and below other voices.

My father had bought a few cars and needed money. He unscrewed the bidet and moved it to the side. He broke the cement and took away the dirt. He snapped the seal, put his hand inside and pulled it back immediately. Inside the jar, the money had become a paste, as if it had returned to a previous state. From dust to dust, only more humid.

One by one–or rather: fraction by fraction–he separated the bills. As if he were peeling a very fine and brittle onion layer by layer. In the center he found a ball that had already become a solid object, like the stone of an avocado that also holds its secrets. He stuck the bills he could save, in pieces, to the tiles. They stayed there the whole next day and maybe even one more. My father remembers ironing them; I don’t think that would have been necessary.

He called his friend Jorge, the one who was almost like a brother, who then came from Buenos Aires to travel with him to New York. Even when completely ironed out, money that has been moist takes up more space. It requires more air around it, as if it’s afraid of drowning again. They stuffed the dollars inside VHS cases and hid those between clothes in their luggage. I imagine the kind made of plastic, that opened like books. If the dates coincide, it’s possible that they were cases of the many tapes my father had bought from the local video store when DVDs became the norm and they had to switch out their entire holdings. There were movies of all kinds, from Snow White to Amarcord. Over time, the tapes had become moist: on both sides of the rolled-up film you could see white lines in a spiral shape. Never again were these tapes rewound, as one had to do prior to returning them.

They opened a bank account in the Banco de Galicia, where he could deposit the most passable half of the dollars, those that were, as Nacha Guevara sings in Vuelvo, “rotos pero enteros” [“broken but in one piece”]. The rest they brought by train to Washington D.C. to exchange in the US Mint.

In the first office, they were referred to another one. But on their way out and seeing a bank on the corner, they thought they would try to deposit them at once and avoid yet another taxi ride. They started by showing two 100 bills. The clerk went inside to consult and came back a while later to say that, if they would be so kind to wait, a staff member would come to assist them. And no, that they shouldn’t leave for lunch.

The staff was a man and a woman, both young, tall, and beautiful, according to the description I recently obtained. They asked if there were more bills, they asked how many, they wanted to hear the story, they asked my father and Jorge to follow them. They all got into a blue sedan (I imagine it to be of a dark metallic hue). The back doors did not have door handles inside, nor did they have controls to open the windows. Any month of the year, it would feel too warm on that backseat. They arrived at a garage and were received by men in dark suits. They were accompanied to a small room that had a wall with an inscription warning: “anything that is said can be used against you.” They were invited to take a seat on chairs fixed to the ground with silver-colored chains. Opposite them, one of the men sat down, unbuttoning his jacket so as to reveal the grip of a handgun.

Pretty much the same questions: how many bills, why did they hide them pretending to bring movies. Why did they not declare them? It was 30,050 US dollars, they hid them because in their countries it was forbidden to have foreign currency, and, yes, they had in fact declared them by ticking the box next to “more than 10,000.” No-one had asked them how much more, which was later confirmed by a customs agent.

He left and came back. He rocked back and forth in the chair. He looked askance, a half smile. “Do you want to hire a lawyer?” He left and came back. Serious-looking. “They are all false.” He rocked in the chair. “With all due respect, that’s not possible. They were acquired in different years, from different sources, they can’t all be false.” He left and came back. As he sat down, he straightened his suit. Serious-looking. “Half are false.” He looked them in the eyes. “That’s still not possible, as I told you, they arrived in my hands in different moments, in different places. Moreover, we know dollars, we have made a little machine–see how interesting–that reacts to the magnetic ink and warns you when a dollar isn’t real.” He made himself comfortable in the chair, stretching backwards. “Call us tomorrow and we’ll give you more news. We suggest you don’t leave Washington.” He recommended a hotel.

It’s important to clarify that all of this is remembered by someone who believes to have ironed those dollars (and maybe a few German marks, too), even if they had already been stretched by the prolonged contact with the tiles. It’s possible that nothing actually occurred in this particular way.

Jorge called at 10 am and didn’t get any news. He called again and they were expected. This time, they were seated in chairs without chains. They received a brown envelope, requests for apologies, a kiss on the cheek from a tall, beautiful, young woman, wishes for a nice afternoon, and the correct address for the Mint.

I picture a room with a marble floor in different shades of grey. A woman welcomed them, she was neither friendly nor unfriendly, she had a wide body and dark skin. “How many?” She filled out a receipt with numbers and letters that corresponded to the mentioned total, without even glancing inside the envelope.

A month later, a check arrived in the mail.

Carla Zaccagnini

5.Black money

The dealership was on Avenida Pompeia, in front of a gas station and next to the most elegant car mechanic I have ever seen. It was in a bend, at the end of the downhill slope (or at the beginning of an uphill slope, when moving towards the river). It was one of those slopes that, at a certain speed, makes the car wheels get off the asphalt, causing a sensation in the belly that in Brazil is known as “sigh of a virgin.”

It was a stretch that was prone to accidents. On the one hand, summer rainstorms would make the valley flood at times. On the other hand, the sensation of the downhill drive combined with the turn often caused collisions, sometimes against the gates of the dealership and the cars parked near the perimeter.

But not that day. It was a quiet day, when my father read the newspaper or played solitaire on the screen while he waited for the next potential client. Someone looking for a new car, selling an old car, or looking for a change. A foreign man came in and he inquired about the price of several vehicles. “This one?” “And that one?” “And the one over there, the silver one?” “And that black Ford?” He took down the price of each.

The man’s accent and his disperse interests called my father’s attention. He didn’t seem to know what he was looking for. My father asked the typical questions: “Do you want it for work?” “Do you have a family?” The answers were vague, sometimes evasive. Just a curious guy, my father thought. Or someone who is studying the market, maybe a future competitor.

Three or four weeks later, he returned with his brother (or cousin), who was particularly friendly. The new relative carried a book in French under his arm, as if he was in the middle of reading it. A novel, probably. My father doesn’t remember the title or the author, but it was the language of the book that helped him in placing their accent and that initiated a conversation ending with “we are from the Ivory Coast.”

The relative with the book was equally eclectic in his interests, but a bit more precise in his research. He discretely directed what appeared to be a random walkthrough. They both walked between the cars to ask for prices and to check their teeth. My father followed them with his eyes, coming as close as allowed by his foot in a cast, without being able to get through the narrow passages between the cars that had been carefully parked, as if they had been put in place from high up above by giant but delicate hands. They chose five cars of different makes, models, years, colors, and engine capacities.

Apparently, the combination of makes, models, years, colors, and engine capacities that could be resold in Ivory Coast. They had come on a business trip, they said. The family member with the book spoke most: “We have been importing used cars from Germany,” (some details which my father doesn’t remember would fill in the coming lines) “we were studying options, running numbers, and it seems that it is more convenient bringing them from here, by boat. We are waiting for the money to arrive and soon we will be able to close the deal. How about we meet at your home tomorrow and we explain in further detail how we can arrange the payment?”

My father was a bit nervous about this visit. It was a bit strange that they wanted to meet in his home, and that the form of payment needed that much explanation. He asked a friend to come over, so that there would be two players on each side, and he asked his girlfriend to be upstairs, as if keeping a card up his sleeve.

His friend didn’t arrive at the agreed time, though he could still arrive at any moment. The two brothers (or cousins) arrived with a briefcase that my father calls 007. The one talking was still the one with the book, even though this time he didn’t bring it: “What happened is the following, Mister Guillermo: the money is already here, it is in the boat. And it is all like this.” He showed a bill dyed in black.

He showed four or five bills, all of which were totally black. And the relative who had never carried a book under his arm asked for some water. My father made a gesture to get up. His leg in a cast made moving much more difficult, so he pointed to the kitchen and said: “If you don’t mind, could you go get a bowl with water?” The man didn’t mind. My father sat back down in the seat. The relative with the book (who hadn’t brought the book) looked at him with a smile.

His cousin-brother came back from the kitchen with a bowl filled with water. He took out a little flask from his pocket, poured some drops of a transparent liquid in the water that didn’t change color, and said: “This liquid is the only thing able to clean the dye.” “It doesn’t come off with water alone?” “No, no, no, no, no.” Green hues started to appear, the ornaments, the portraits, the numbers: two or three bills of 20 or 10, and one of 100. Clean. Like magic.

The captain of the boat didn’t want to hand over the money until they paid his part of the deal. My father didn’t understand, or pretended not to understand, the problem. They just needed to clean the necessary bills to pay the captain in his cabin (like they had just shown in this living room). But no, they couldn’t clean the money in the port, no, no, no, no, no. And the captain was steadfast: as long as he hadn’t received his part of the clean dollars, the black dollars wouldn’t come off the boat. They also needed money to buy the liquid, which was extremely expensive. My father doesn’t remember how much they said it cost, he never had a good memory for numbers.

The plan was that my father would advance the captain’s amount, plus the cost of the secret liquid. He doesn’t recall the numbers, but these also wouldn’t reveal much, after so many years. It was a percentage of the profit from the sale of five used cars in a transatlantic trade. Once the captain would be appeased, they would recuperate the full sum with which they were to pay for the five reserved cars. They would leave my father the black dollars and the necessary amount of the chemical to clean them. And they would return to Ivory Coast, by boat, with the five cars and the stubborn captain, now satisfied.

To show my father they were trustworthy, they left him the bill of 100, so that he could check its authenticity. “You can have it checked,” said the one with the book. My father had already checked it: he knew dollars, he had even fabricated a little machine that lit up when detecting the magnetic strip used in dollars printed by the Mint. There was no reason for it to be false. It would be like a magician who, wanting to prove that there was no trick, showed a marked-up card.

They told him to think about it and they agreed to return in the afternoon. They rang the bell and he opened again. They came without the briefcase. My father noticed that and thought that it was in order to be free of incriminating evidence in case he had contacted the police. They sat down again at the same table. “Interesting,” my father said, “but I think you will have to find someone a bit more naive, it is not going to work with me.”

They kept up their niceness, and left with a smile, without knowing very well what to say. At the door, they said goodbye in a friendly manner and my father kept the 100 dollars. A while later he read in the newspaper that a group of swindlers had been arrested in São Paulo. The article described in detail the trick of the black dollar bills and included a picture of the squad. My father thinks he recognized the first one who visited him, the one who went into his kitchen and filled the bowl with water. The relative with the book was not in the photo.

CarlaZaccagnini

In the series Horizontes USA [Horizons USA], title and images that constitute the work were taken from the publication Horizons USA distributed by the US embassies in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s. In this series, Zaccagnini specifically used the issues numbers 6, 26 and 27, purposely employing only the images and leaving out the original texts that constituted the narratives chosen by the North American empire at the time.

In the series Horizontes USA [Horizons USA], title and images that constitute the work were taken from the publication Horizons USA distributed by the US embassies in Latin America in the 1970s and 80s. In this series, Zaccagnini specifically used the issues numbers 6, 26 and 27, purposely employing only the images and leaving out the original texts that constituted the narratives chosen by the North American empire at the time.

On the gallery’s façade, the work that lends it´s title to the exhibition creates a vertical horizon. At the meeting of the two sentences, a division inverting the reading creates a horizontal cut that imposes itself as a border guiding the field of linguistic investigation at the exhibition.

Horizonte do Sertão [Wilderness’ horizon] (2018) shows a horizontal line emanating from the presence of the word ‘horizon’ in the book Grande sertão: veredas, by João Guimarães Rosa. In this series of works, Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain search for the word ‘horizon’ in a particular book, scan its pages and erase all the lines of text, leaving only those in which ‘horizon’ is written. After reprinting the full-size pages, the artists organize the montage by profiling the lines of text and creating a horizon of words. The number of parts that make up each work is given by the number of lines with the word ‘horizon’ in each book.

In the series Metamorphoses, Detanico and Lain create from the work of the same title by the Latin poet Ovid, narrating episodes lived by characters from Greek mythology and the transformations that give the book its name: men who transform themselves into rivers, flowers and rocks; nymphs that are transformed into sounds; gods that transform themselves into birds. Each work in the series narrates one of these transformations.

In the series Metamorphoses, Detanico and Lain create from the work of the same title by the Latin poet Ovid, narrating episodes lived by characters from Greek mythology and the transformations that give the book its name: men who transform themselves into rivers, flowers and rocks; nymphs that are transformed into sounds; gods that transform themselves into birds. Each work in the series narrates one of these transformations.

Corpos verdes (2022) [Green bodies] is a poem in 14 images written in Biotipo, a writing system based on images of the artists’ bodies. Detanico and Lain photographed themselves and cut out parts of their bodies to designate with images each of the letters in the alphabet. The system is divided into different shades of green, defining the order in which the overlapping words should be read, from darkest to lightest. The deformations of these body segments are reminiscent of images of foliage. The poem speaks of a body in constant metamorphosis between the world, the word and nature.

Corpos verdes (2022) [Green bodies] is a poem in 14 images written in Biotipo, a writing system based on images of the artists’ bodies. Detanico and Lain photographed themselves and cut out parts of their bodies to designate with images each of the letters in the alphabet. The system is divided into different shades of green, defining the order in which the overlapping words should be read, from darkest to lightest. The deformations of these body segments are reminiscent of images of foliage. The poem speaks of a body in constant metamorphosis between the world, the word and nature.

Exiting the room toward the second floor of the gallery, there are works from the series Vanitas (2018). In this series, words that refer to the passage of time are written with the Vanitas writing system, in which each letter of the alphabet is designated by a certain number of flowers within vases. A vase with one flower corresponds to the letter A, a vase with two flowers to the letter B, and so on. The exhibition features two works from the Vanitas series: Vida, written with red anthuriums, and Tempo, written with white carnations. Here, real nature (flowers) and conventional nature (time) meet under a single perspective.

This crossing still leaves the doubt: when is the right time to change the flowers in the vases?

Vanitas more information here

Exiting the room toward the second floor of the gallery, there are works from the series Vanitas (2018). In this series, words that refer to the passage of time are written with the Vanitas writing system, in which each letter of the alphabet is designated by a certain number of flowers within vases. A vase with one flower corresponds to the letter A, a vase with two flowers to the letter B, and so on. The exhibition features two works from the Vanitas series: Vida, written with red anthuriums, and Tempo, written with white carnations. Here, real nature (flowers) and conventional nature (time) meet under a single perspective.

This crossing still leaves the doubt: when is the right time to change the flowers in the vases?

In the series Clouds (2022), Detanico Lain created a set of 15 images of white clouds on a blue background. From a distance, the observer can, as in a game, look for shapes in the clouds, but when getting closer, he sees that, in fact, the clouds are made of letters that form words. The letters scattered across the images also require some investigation to uncover the word that is there.

In the series Clouds (2022), Detanico Lain created a set of 15 images of white clouds on a blue background. From a distance, the observer can, as in a game, look for shapes in the clouds, but when getting closer, he sees that, in fact, the clouds are made of letters that form words. The letters scattered across the images also require some investigation to uncover the word that is there.

In the series Clouds (2022), Detanico Lain created a set of 15 images of white clouds on a blue background. From a distance, the observer can, as in a game, look for shapes in the clouds, but when getting closer, he sees that, in fact, the clouds are made of letters that form words. The letters scattered across the images also require some investigation to uncover the word that is there.

In Vanitas, words that refer to the passage of time are written with the Vanitas writing system, in which each letter of the alphabet is designated by a certain number of flowers within vases. A vase with one flower corresponds to the letter A, a vase with two flowers to the letter B, and so on. The exhibition features two works from the Vanitas series: Vida, written with red anthuriums, and Tempo, written with white carnations. Here, real nature (flowers) and conventional nature (time) meet under a single perspective.

This crossing still leaves the doubt: when is the right time to change the flowers in the vases?

In Vanitas (2018), words that refer to the passage of time are written with the Vanitas writing system, in which each letter of the alphabet is designated by a certain number of flowers within vases. A vase with one flower corresponds to the letter A, a vase with two flowers to the letter B, and so on. The exhibition features two works from the Vanitas series: Vida, written with red anthuriums, and Tempo, written with white carnations. Here, real nature (flowers) and conventional nature (time) meet under a single perspective.

This crossing still leaves the doubt: when is the right time to change the flowers in the vases?

Atlas (southern hemisphere) (2022), a carbon pencil drawing on a wall that represents the constellation of stars visible to the naked eye and connected by straight lines, as on a map.

In Terra Incognita (2022), the title of the work appears written in acrylic over linen canvas, using the Timezonetype system, developed by Detanico Lain. Timezonetype is a typography created from the relationship between time zones and the letters of the alphabet. Portions of the map cut by the time zone are used to designate letters. By this way, words are written with pieces of maps, creating arrangements that break the cartographic order and propose new readings of the world based on the written word.

The work Pilha, by Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, introduces a writing system based on stacking identical objects, which represent letters of the alphabet. Using bricks, erasers, wooden boxes, and sugar cubes, the artists create “texts” arranged in the gallery space. To understand the phrases, one must decipher the code created by them. The piece does not disregard traditional writing but reinterprets it, offering a new way of seeing and interpreting everyday objects.

In this video, two opposites coexist: an act of destruction, which could be seen as a manifestation contrary to the categorical reasons that are often used to justify control excesses (the strict and perfect forms); and a controlled process of absolutely emptying the form, which paradoxically is responsible for the event of destruction.
The aesthetic irruption of a perfect square, which surprises the viewer in this video, is the result of an operation created, calculated and controlled with precision.
Only when the form collapses is it suddenly understood that the record makes visible a transparent cube, and not a plane on which a reframing has been traced. This cube was hermetically closed and connected to a vacuum pump (off-camera) which for two minutes extracts with assistance the air contained inside the mold. At the moment of total vacuum, the object implodes and passes from immobility to abrupt mobility, which in decelerated rhythm is observed as an admirable catastrophe.
In this work Andrés Ramírez Gaviria experiments with time – the time that is perceived and the time that goes unnoticed – and, in the meantime, reduces the abstract geometric shapes from their minimal expression to their disappearance through rational practices that have emotional consequences.

[:pt]Nesta obra o artista coloca em diálogo as noções de tempo e espaço, jogo e criação, a partir de doze esferas fabricadas com materiais que viajaram através do espaço e que, por isso, com seus 4.550 milhões de anos de existência, testemunham as profundidades do tempo. Os meteoritos são os materiais mais antigos e primitivos que se conhecem no universo. Deste modo as peças fazem alusões diversas em que se enlaçam mistérios e mitologias da origem com práticas populares e com princípios de organização temporal. Observa o artista que doze é um número fundamental para o calendário e para a medição do tempo no ocidente. Um ano tem doze meses e as unidades básicas com as quais se mede a temporalidade são divisíveis por esse número: 60 segundos, 60 minutos ou 24 horas. Ao mesmo tempo, os padrões esféricos, que remetem às brincadeiras de rua com bolinhas de gude, recordam a beleza desses pequenos objetos que normalmente foram relacionados a corpos celestes devido tanto à sua esfericidade como ao movimento circular em que se encontram as cores entre as transparências do vidro com que são fabricados. A brincadeira de bolinhas de gude, em sua prática comum e atual, está desprovida de leituras míticas ou culturais. No entanto Ramírez Gaviria reflete contemplando a competição na qual as pequenas esferas se roçam e entrechocam, e recorda que em outros tempos estas brincadeiras estavam de fato dotadas de sentidos míticos e que durante milênios as culturas veneraram aos corpos celestes como se fossem deidades. Brincar com corpos celestes, portanto, é uma metáfora de brincar com Deus. Ainda que muitas crenças tenham ficado para trás com o decorrer dos séculos, as noções criacionistas, sejam estas evolutivas ou religiosas, seguem conservando espaços importantes.[:en]In this work, the artist puts into dialogue the notions of time and space, play and creation, starting with twelve spheres made of materials that have traveled through space and that therefore, with their 4,550 million years of existence, bear witness to the depths of time. Meteorites are the oldest and most primitive materials known in the universe. In this way the pieces make diverse allusions in which mysteries and mythologies of origin are intertwined with popular practices and with principles of temporal organization. The artist notes that twelve is a fundamental number for the calendar and the measurement of time in the West. A year has twelve months, and the basic units with which temporality is measured are divisible by this number: 60 seconds, 60 minutes, or 24 hours. At the same time, the spherical patterns, reminiscent of the street games with marbles, recall the beauty of these small objects that have usually been related to celestial bodies due to both their sphericity and the circular movement in which the colors are found between the transparencies of the glass with which they are made. The playing of marbles, in its common and current practice, is devoid of mythical or cultural readings. However, Ramírez Gaviria reflects contemplating the competition in which the small balls rub against each other and clash, and recalls that in other times these games were in fact endowed with mythical meanings and that for millennia cultures venerated the celestial bodies as if they were deities. Playing with celestial bodies, therefore, is a metaphor for playing with God. Although many beliefs have been left behind over the centuries, creationist notions, whether evolutionary or religious, still retain important spaces.[:]

In this work, the artist puts into dialogue the notions of time and space, play and creation, starting with twelve spheres made of materials that have traveled through space and that therefore, with their 4,550 million years of existence, bear witness to the depths of time. Meteorites are the oldest and most primitive materials known in the universe. In this way the pieces make diverse allusions in which mysteries and mythologies of origin are intertwined with popular practices and with principles of temporal organization.
The artist notes that twelve is a fundamental number for the calendar and the measurement of time in the West. A year has twelve months, and the basic units with which temporality is measured are divisible by this number: 60 seconds, 60 minutes, or 24 hours.
At the same time, the spherical patterns, reminiscent of the street games with marbles, recall the beauty of these small objects that have usually been related to celestial bodies due to both their sphericity and the circular movement in which the colors are found between the transparencies of the glass with which they are made. The playing of marbles, in its common and current practice, is devoid of mythical or cultural readings.
However, Ramírez Gaviria reflects contemplating the competition in which the small balls rub against each other and clash, and recalls that in other times these games were in fact endowed with mythical meanings and that for millennia cultures venerated the celestial bodies as if they were deities. Playing with celestial bodies, therefore, is a metaphor for playing with God. Although many beliefs have been left behind over the centuries, creationist notions, whether evolutionary or religious, still retain important spaces.

[:pt]Neste trabalho o artista explora os limites do perceptível e também as probabilidades de visibilizar o invisível com o apoio de diversas formas de tradução. Isso com a finalidade de propor significados que sempre estão abertos à interpretação. Em Sources as imagens representam a captura possível de ser feita a partir da terra de ondas de rádio emitidas há milhões de anos por quasares no espaço cósmico remoto, o que se supõe ter ocorrido nos momentos nos quais o universo vivia a sua infância. A captura se efetuou através de telescópios de ondas que registram a informação que se desloca em somatórias de anos luz que chegam a ser inconcebíveis para a noção humana do tempo. Os indícios sonoros foram digitalizados e posteriormente convertidos em imagens bidimensionais com o apoio de Zsolt Paragi, Joint Institute for VLBI, e Sandor Frey, FOMI Satelite Geodetic Observatory. Assim, pretende-se não somente representar, de forma condensada e presente, o tempo inabarcável e remotíssimo, mas também se alcança uma forma de reter neste lugar ocorrências que não são terrenas. Para consegui-lo atravessam-se mundos formais diversos a fim de obter resultados que, além disso, nunca são definitivos ou fechados. As imagens são uma interpretação que sempre pode variar de acordo com a representação que se faça dos códigos matemáticos.[:en]In this work, the artist explores the limits of the perceptible and also the probabilities of making the invisible visible with the support of different forms of translation. This, in order to propose meanings that are always open to interpretation. In Sources, the images represent the capture, possible to be made from Earth, of radio waves emitted millions of years ago by quasars in the remote cosmic space, which supposedly occurred in the moments when the universe was in its infancy. The capture was carried out through wave telescopes that record the information moving in sums of light years that are inconceivable for the human notion of time. The sound cues were digitized and later converted into two-dimensional images with the support of Zsolt Paragi, Joint Institute for VLBI, and Sandor Frey, FOMI Satellite Geodetic Observatory. In this way, it is intended to represent, in a condensed and present manner, not only the incomprehensible and remote time, but also a mode of retaining in this place occurrences that are not earthly. To achieve this, different formal worlds are traversed in order to obtain results that, ultimately, are never definitive or closed. The images are an interpretation that can always vary according to the representation made from the mathematical codes.[:]

[:pt]Neste trabalho o artista explora os limites do perceptível e também as probabilidades de visibilizar o invisível com o apoio de diversas formas de tradução. Isso com a finalidade de propor significados que sempre estão abertos à interpretação. Em Sources as imagens representam a captura possível de ser feita a partir da terra de ondas de rádio emitidas há milhões de anos por quasares no espaço cósmico remoto, o que se supõe ter ocorrido nos momentos nos quais o universo vivia a sua infância. A captura se efetuou através de telescópios de ondas que registram a informação que se desloca em somatórias de anos luz que chegam a ser inconcebíveis para a noção humana do tempo. Os indícios sonoros foram digitalizados e posteriormente convertidos em imagens bidimensionais com o apoio de Zsolt Paragi, Joint Institute for VLBI, e Sandor Frey, FOMI Satelite Geodetic Observatory. Assim, pretende-se não somente representar, de forma condensada e presente, o tempo inabarcável e remotíssimo, mas também se alcança uma forma de reter neste lugar ocorrências que não são terrenas. Para consegui-lo atravessam-se mundos formais diversos a fim de obter resultados que, além disso, nunca são definitivos ou fechados. As imagens são uma interpretação que sempre pode variar de acordo com a representação que se faça dos códigos matemáticos.[:en]In this work, the artist explores the limits of the perceptible and also the probabilities of making the invisible visible with the support of different forms of translation. This, in order to propose meanings that are always open to interpretation. In Sources, the images represent the capture, possible to be made from Earth, of radio waves emitted millions of years ago by quasars in the remote cosmic space, which supposedly occurred in the moments when the universe was in its infancy. The capture was carried out through wave telescopes that record the information moving in sums of light years that are inconceivable for the human notion of time. The sound cues were digitized and later converted into two-dimensional images with the support of Zsolt Paragi, Joint Institute for VLBI, and Sandor Frey, FOMI Satellite Geodetic Observatory. In this way, it is intended to represent, in a condensed and present manner, not only the incomprehensible and remote time, but also a mode of retaining in this place occurrences that are not earthly. To achieve this, different formal worlds are traversed in order to obtain results that, ultimately, are never definitive or closed. The images are an interpretation that can always vary according to the representation made from the mathematical codes.[:]

[:pt]Com esta obra, iniciada em 2010, Gaviria segue em sua reflexão sobre a imensa quantidade de informação imperceptível que nos envolve. O artista se refere também às inumeráveis limitações que dificultam a interpretação e a tradução dessa informação, assim como às crenças e atos de fé que seguimos para tentar dar sentido a essas complexidades. Beyond Black parece inocente: um painel negro brilhante que reflete a imagem do espectador. A partir desta perspectiva, Beyond Black poderia representar uma atração narcisista. No entanto, sem que o espectador saiba, a obra acolhe na verdade um nanoquadriculado que a visão comum não consegue ler. Os objetos não figurativos ou “abstratos” têm uma qualidade sedutora relacionada a seu caráter esquivo. Podem funcionar como espaços vazios sobre os quais tentamos projetar nossos próprios desejos e crenças, sem que por isso cheguemos a defini- los a partir dessa intenção. Isso acontece por exemplo com o Quadrado negro de Malevich e nas inumeráveis e diferentes leituras que esta obra suscitou. Beyond Black fala sobre esta mesma ideia e assim se propõe uma sedução a partir do intangível.[:en]With this work, begun in 2010, Gaviria carries on his reflection on the immense amount of imperceptible information that surrounds us. The artist also refers to the innumerable limitations that make it difficult to interpret and translate this information, as well as the beliefs and acts of faith that we follow in order to try to make sense of these complexities. Beyond Black looks innocent: a glossy black panel that reflects the viewer’s image. From this perspective, Beyond Black could represent a narcissistic attraction. However, unbeknownst to the viewer, the work actually hosts a nano-checkerboard that the ordinary vision cannot read. Nonfigurative or “abstract” objects have a seductive quality related to their elusiveness. They can function as empty spaces on which we try to project our own desires and beliefs, without actually defining them based on this intention. This happens, for example, with Malevich’s Black Square and in the innumerable and different readings that this work aroused. Beyond Black discusses this same idea and thus proposes a seduction from the intangible.[:]

[:pt]A menina dos desenhos animados Nefertiti pisca periodicamente com um sutil desafio. Extraída das páginas da tese de doutoramento de Ivan Sutherland de 1963 intitulada Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, a imagem de Nefertiti é uma ilustração precoce da conveniência “artística” de copiar uma imagem ou partes dela, instantaneamente, várias vezes com a ajuda de um programa de computador. Sutherland incluiu a imagem na sua tese como uma ilustração da função de criar utilizando o comando “copiar e colar”. Menos de meio século depois, numa paisagem cultural que abraça o ato de copiar como uma banalidade quotidiana, Nefertiti parece tanto uma profecia perdida como uma figura de ilustração. A sua piscadela - uma simples sequência animada de imagens quase idênticas que se substituem sucessivamente - sugere muito mais do que mostra. O seu gesto despretensioso parece uma sutil inferência a uma forma de produção cultural improvável de ter sido imaginada em 1963 pela maioria, muito menos pelo Dr. Sutherland, que segundo as suas próprias palavras “... apenas queria fazer belas imagens”.[:en]The cartoon girl Nefertiti winks periodically in subtle defiance. Taken from the pages of Ivan Sutherland’s 1963 PhD thesis titled Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, the image of Nefertiti is an early illustration of the “artistic” convenience of copying an image or parts of it, instantly, multiple times with the aid of a computer program. Ivan Sutherland included the image of Nefertiti in his PhD thesis as an illustration of the function of creating instances from an object or in more contemporary terms, using the cut, copy and paste command. Less than a half century later, in a cultural landscape that embraces the act of copying as an everyday banality, Nefertiti seems as much a lost prophecy as a figure of illustration. Her wink – a simple animated sequence of nearly identical images that successively replace each other – suggests far more than it shows. Her coquettish gesture seems a subtle inference to a form of cultural production unlikely to have been imagined in 1963 by most, much less by Dr. Sutherland, who according to his own words “...just wanted to make nice pictures.”[:]

The cartoon girl Nefertiti winks periodically in subtle defiance. Taken from the pages of Ivan Sutherland’s 1963 PhD thesis titled Sketchpad, A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System, the image of Nefertiti is an early illustration of the “artistic” convenience of copying an image or parts of it, instantly, multiple times with the aid of a computer program.
Ivan Sutherland included the image of Nefertiti in his PhD thesis as an illustration of the function of creating instances from an object or in more contemporary terms, using the cut, copy and paste command. Less than a half century later, in a cultural landscape that embraces the act of copying as an everyday banality, Nefertiti seems as much a lost prophecy as a figure of illustration.
Her wink – a simple animated sequence of nearly identical images that successively replace each other – suggests far more than it shows. Her coquettish gesture seems a subtle inference to a form of cultural production unlikely to have been imagined in 1963 by most, much less by Dr. Sutherland, who according to his own words “…just wanted to make nice pictures.”

In this work Andrés Ramírez Gaviria reflects on the possibilities and limitations of interpretation and representation, as well as on the conceptual conventions in the world we inhabit. The focus of his reflection in this case is the historical definition of the unit of weight called kilogram.
The images record some of the official copies (numbered) of the prototype of the reference object for this unit of weight, which were distributed among the institutions responsible for the control of weights and measures in different countries of the planet.
The model was made of iridium platinum, a high-density metal and therefore resistant to corrosion, which guarantees the permanence of the conventional weight as a reference.
Despite this, the observation made it possible to verify that after some time some variations were registered. Ramírez Gaviria’s approach points out once again in this work the changing support on which the illusion of the formal, the solid and the concrete is sustained.

In this work Andrés Ramírez Gaviria reflects on the possibilities and limitations of interpretation and representation, as well as on the conceptual conventions in the world we inhabit. The focus of his reflection in this case is the historical definition of the unit of weight called kilogram.
The images record some of the official copies (numbered) of the prototype of the reference object for this unit of weight, which were distributed among the institutions responsible for the control of weights and measures in different countries of the planet.
The model was made of iridium platinum, a high-density metal and therefore resistant to corrosion, which guarantees the permanence of the conventional weight as a reference.
Despite this, the observation made it possible to verify that after some time some variations were registered. Ramírez Gaviria’s approach points out once again in this work the changing support on which the illusion of the formal, the solid and the concrete is sustained.

With this work, the artist explores the notion of artistic failure through the historical figure of Samuel Morse, the renowned inventor who began his successful career in telegraphy while seeing the vanishing of his dream of becoming an artist of the stature of the great European painters he most admired.
The photography in this work focuses on the first prototype built by Morse for his telegraphic project in 1837. In this first initial experiment, Morse installed the telegraphic apparatus in a pictorial frame, with which – probably unintentionally – he gave history an image in which one can visualize a cross between the world of the arts and that of the sciences.
The works that accompany the photography are transcriptions in Morse code of some of the letters that Morse wrote expressing his sadness and frustration when he understood that he would not become the great artist he had set out to become and that, therefore, he would not see realized the dreams for which he prepared himself at art academies in the United States and in Europe.
In addition to the inventor’s feelings, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria recognizes Morse’s communicative creation as a powerful work of abstract art that goes far beyond the first goals that the author had set for himself in painting.

With this work, the artist explores the notion of artistic failure through the historical figure of Samuel Morse, the renowned inventor who began his successful career in telegraphy while seeing the vanishing of his dream of becoming an artist of the stature of the great European painters he most admired.
The photography in this work focuses on the first prototype built by Morse for his telegraphic project in 1837. In this first initial experiment, Morse installed the telegraphic apparatus in a pictorial frame, with which – probably unintentionally – he gave history an image in which one can visualize a cross between the world of the arts and that of the sciences.
The works that accompany the photography are transcriptions in Morse code of some of the letters that Morse wrote expressing his sadness and frustration when he understood that he would not become the great artist he had set out to become and that, therefore, he would not see realized the dreams for which he prepared himself at art academies in the United States and in Europe.
In addition to the inventor’s feelings, Andrés Ramírez Gaviria recognizes Morse’s communicative creation as a powerful work of abstract art that goes far beyond the first goals that the author had set for himself in painting.

Going deeper into the territory of understanding the abstract, this work is structured from an exercise in telepathic communication between Andrés Ramírez Gaviria and his wife, Jeanna Nikolov, that provided a series of drawings. These were inspired by the demonstrations that the American writer Upton Sinclair had made of the telepathic ability of his wife Mary Craig Sinclair, which he observed and analyzed during several years of his life.
In order to provide material evidence of his second wife’s telepathic abilities, Upton Sinclair carried out several experiments with her. Among other dynamics of encounters without words and without physical presence, the writer proposed to his wife that she would draw 290 shapes that he would select and which she could only access through her telepathic powers. The results revealed by this and other procedures on which the couple worked for three years in a row were published by Upton Sinclair in a book he authored and entitled Mental Radio. A copy of the first edition of this book is displayed along with the drawings by Ramírez Gaviria and his wife.

Going deeper into the territory of understanding the abstract, this work is structured from an exercise in telepathic communication between Andrés Ramírez Gaviria and his wife, Jeanna Nikolov, that provided a series of drawings. These were inspired by the demonstrations that the American writer Upton Sinclair had made of the telepathic ability of his wife Mary Craig Sinclair, which he observed and analyzed during several years of his life.
In order to provide material evidence of his second wife’s telepathic abilities, Upton Sinclair carried out several experiments with her. Among other dynamics of encounters without words and without physical presence, the writer proposed to his wife that she would draw 290 shapes that he would select and which she could only access through her telepathic powers. The results revealed by this and other procedures on which the couple worked for three years in a row were published by Upton Sinclair in a book he authored and entitled Mental Radio. A copy of the first edition of this book is displayed along with the drawings by Ramírez Gaviria and his wife.

Going deeper into the territory of understanding the abstract, this work is structured from an exercise in telepathic communication between Andrés Ramírez Gaviria and his wife, Jeanna Nikolov, that provided a series of drawings. These were inspired by the demonstrations that the American writer Upton Sinclair had made of the telepathic ability of his wife Mary Craig Sinclair, which he observed and analyzed during several years of his life.
In order to provide material evidence of his second wife’s telepathic abilities, Upton Sinclair carried out several experiments with her. Among other dynamics of encounters without words and without physical presence, the writer proposed to his wife that she would draw 290 shapes that he would select and which she could only access through her telepathic powers. The results revealed by this and other procedures on which the couple worked for three years in a row were published by Upton Sinclair in a book he authored and entitled Mental Radio. A copy of the first edition of this book is displayed along with the drawings by Ramírez Gaviria and his wife.

This work places the viewer in front of the mathematical formula for the creative process proposed by the Russian writer Nikolai Punin. He developed it in Petrograd in the summer of 1919, when he imparted a series of lectures entitled “Pervyi tsikl lektsii” (“First cycle of lectures”).

The intention implicit in this formula is to apply to art the same methodical thinking as the one found in science. S (Pi + Pii + Piii +…Pπ) Y = T. In the formula, S is the sum of the principles (P), Y is intuition and T is an artistic creation. In the artist’s words: the methodologies of science applied to the field of art can be humorous and suggestive at the same time. The formula developed by Punin supposes an unlikely symbiosis between reason and imagination, creativity and practicality. Stories end in new beginnings and consequently their boundaries are blurred and intangible. Information, including that which is condensed into a mathematical formula, is recreated according to each new interpretation.

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

Em 1971, Claudia Andujar publicou o ensaio fotográfico A Sônia no primeiro número da Revista de Fotografia (junho de 1971), que na época tinha George Love como editor. Segundo Andujar, o ensaio consumiu 10 rolos de filmes que foram refotografados utilizando o Repronar. O ensaio foi apresentado na forma de projeção de slide, no MASP, em 1971, com a música I had a Dream do cantor, compositor e fundador da banda The Loovin Spoonful, John Sebastian.

A Sônia

Sônia veio da Bahia. Queria ser modelo. Tentou as editoras e os estúdios de diversos fotógrafos, mas não conseguiu trabalho. Conheci-a nessa ocasião. Sônia não apresentava as características comuns às modelos. Alguma coisa, entretanto, havia nessa moça que me impressionava fortemente. Mas eu não sabia o que era. Guardei seu endereço. Não demorei a chamá-la. Realizamos este ensaio. Depois, sem outra oportunidade, Sônia voltou à Bahia.

O corpo humano é para mim o objeto mais belo que existe. Por isso, há anos sonhava em realizar um ensaio fotográfico sobre as formas físicas da mulher para conseguir revelar sua essência. No mundo atual, os homens têm menos consciência do próprio corpo. Essa consciência quando é clara e procurada, aumenta misteriosamente a beleza e o significado do corpo, como se lhe atribuísse cores. Assim, sinto as mulheres azuis e os homens cinza. O fascínio que pode exercer um corpo feminino em quem o observa e estuda, vai além da sensualidade, tornando-o objeto perfeito para a criação artística. Inclusive, é possível também que, como mulher, ao realizar um ensaio estético sobre as formas físicas femininas, eu esteja procurando uma identificação reflexa e idealizada do que desconheço do meu próprio corpo. Mas não poderei explicar por que Sônia, a moça que todos os meus colegas recusaram como modelo, servia perfeitamente para o meu ensaio. E mais, por que o corpo azul de Sônia se tornaria a revelação das imagens de um sonho?

No primeiro dia, depois de uma hora de fotografias, tive de interromper o trabalho. Sônia não sabia posar. Porém, era justamente disso que provinha seu encanto inocente. Os gestos e atitudes não profissionais revelaram uma sensualidade mansa, tranquila. Ela não parecia estar diante da câmera fotográfica, mas fora do mundo. Tentei compreender esse outro mundo oferecendo-lhe alguns discos para escolher um. Sônia ouviu vários e depois ficou repetindo uma única canção: I had a Dream (Eu tive um sonho), de autoria de John B. Sebastian, em que o próprio compositor a cantou acompanhado por um violão no Festival de Woodstock. Por coincidência era uma de minhas canções prediletas. Sônia não compreendia uma só palavra da letra. Quando voltamos ao trabalho, ouvindo essa música, ela assumia espontaneamente poses oníricas, sem saber tratar-se de um sonho o que Sebastian cantava. Assim, Sônia me revelou também o que eu sempre quis captar no corpo de uma mulher. E o ensaio fotográfico que realizava integrou-se de forma definitiva com essa música. Era um sonho, ou melhor, eu tivera um sonho em qualquer instante de minha vida e o estava decifrando no trabalho com Sônia.

Usei apenas um fundo infinito branco. Foram três horas de fotografias convencionais, poucas para um trabalho profissional tão importante para mim: 10 rolos de 36 exposições. Minha intenção era fazer fotos simples e diretas. A partir dessas fotos é que teve início a fase mais complexa e criativa, embora já totalmente programada. Eu chamei essa fase de reconstrução da imagem de Sônia, ou elaboração. Durante a semana em que refotografei as imagens selecionadas, fiz cortes de toda natureza usando filtros de diferentes cores, efetuando revelações em positivo e negativo. Finalmente cheguei a 90 cromos: a sequência ideal. A música de Sebastian agia no meu inconsciente, estimulando a sensibilidade e a intuição. Não sei se era a própria música ou o que ela representava naqueles instantes. Quando cheguei ao final, pude dizer que já não existia mais Sônia. Projetei a série para mim mesma. A felicidade que senti me garantiu que o velho sonho havia sido realizado.

Claudia Andujar na apresentação da projeção em 1971.

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

A Sônia features some of the hallmarks of Andujar’s work, such as superimposing images, rephotography and the use of filters. Sônia was a young woman who came to São Paulo with the desire to work as a model, but was turned down by all the studios she sought. Sonia’s “inability” is the very provocation of the essay. According to Andujar, “Sônia didn’t know how to pose. But that was precisely where her innocent charm came from. The unprofessional gestures and attitudes revealed a gentle, tranquil sensuality. She didn’t seem to be in front of the camera, but out of the world”. The essay was presented in the form of a slide projection, at MASP, in 1971, and published in the first issue of Revista de Fotografia (June 1971).

[:pt]colaboração: João Marcos de Almeida fotografia: Flora Dias som direto: Juliana R. edição: João Marcos de Almeida[:en]collaboration: João Marcos de Almeida photography: Flora Dias direct sound: Juliana R. Editing: João Marcos de Almeida[:]

ainda, sempre, ainda [still, ever, still]: rewriting a cartography, transliterating the word.

The temporal inflection in the exhibition title invokes, at once, the labor of memory. In between figure and ground, clarity and opacity, Marilá Dardot’s gesture is one Walter Benjamin described: “It is about appropriating something dangerous, which clamors to repeat itself with violence.” The strength of this artist-like act of reconfiguring the world and time is precisely where repetition can take on new historical and poetical meanings.

The work of Marilá Dardot has always been connected to the sheen of letters, in its direct relationship with literature or its power to capture the semantic games of language. Now, this hallmark folds over, unfurls, duplicates, amalgamates discourses in a labyrinthine construct that lends a voice to the ambiguity of the word and harbors a ceaseless emanation that strives for the unutterable that inhabits language. There is also the sensibility that delves into themes erased from history, repeated words which take on heteroclite directions and meanings, like the two adverbs chosen – still and ever. Together and in a way juxtaposed, they function as a glimpse into the enigma and a way to work around the imposture of language.

Ainda sempre ainda [still ever still] is an exhibit underpinned from its entrance on in by a state of loss, a relationship of crisis with language.

In Linha do tempo [Timeline], another fold takes place: adverbs clipped from magazines published in Brazil since 1973 – the artist’s year of birth – and pasted on a surface create a timeline that projects the possibility of another passage, that trickles down amidst the words, a curve that scrambles up past, present and future. The questions therein delve deeper into the discussion ushered in by Georges Didi-Huberman in Before time: the realm of a complex, diffuse temporality. He argues that the thinking of Walter Benjamin, which underlies his anachronistic model, suggests that all historical narratives are composed of an assembly of heterogeneous elements. In Benjaminian terms, there is a currency to the past as seen through images. In the timeline Marilá Dardot creates, what comes into play is precisely the immoderateness of this impossibility, a wager on the minor revolution wrought by the dialectic effect that takes place between word and image, supporting enunciation as the last way out of the imaginary and political onslaught.

In Palavra figura de espanto [Word figure of amazement], peeled-off book covers touch the evanescent materiality of word pairs which, in damaged, dusty spots, promote encounters and grooves that outline alternatingly improbable and tense, fluid and harmonic horizons, showcasing the ambiguous, delirious dimension of the word. The amazement in the face of the word – or word itself as a “figure of startlement” – resides in the act of tearing off books’ covers to reveal the pictorial remnants and layers, down to the actual groove created by writing upon the surface: remembrance of the walls of a cave that eventually led us to paper. The artist recognizes that in this journey, an entire trajectory of writing, or of letter, to be more exact: from stylus to quill, from quill to pen, from cursive to block letters, from manuscript to typography and the printing press. As a gesture of resistance, writing survives by welcoming the unsayable and unpronounceable, while also overtaking it with a warehouse’s worth of signs that hails the encounter with other voices and handwritings. Out of so many words – tired and livid, secretive and magical, uttered and held back – a world is forged: from impotence to the impossible, a different map with its marks, stains and coastlines.

In Modelo para armar [Model kit], an installation and collage on cardboard box fragments features nouns cut out from old magazines. The now useless boxes harbor historical, political, affective narratives, and language itself enters the picture to be rearranged and re-signified like projectiles in a symbolic operation. The piece’s title references a book by Julio Cortázar, in which he spins a narrative out of mutable pieces, in an “assembly” where various word displacements set out to purge any fixedness, opening up meanings so the reader can assemble the elements their own way and ultimately write the story themselves.

The work of Marilá Dardot also calls upon us as active readers. Her work is not intended to produce stationary meaning; it does not produce subject-fixating explanations of any sort. Her work is a kind of anchoring that is also adrift and invites the production of new words that may recreate existence, in the very vertigo of unfamiliarity.

In Ações do mundo [Actions of the world], her act of attempting to tear off the covers of books on nations of the world reveals the beauty of map fragments that compose new geographies. The books’ indexes announce chapters that describe countries in nationalist, imperious sentences. A portion of fabric from the cover, folded over, gives the piece its title, subverting the idea of nation into action: nations become the world’s actions, destabilizing the familiar world through inventive handling of language, promoting the mestizaje of heterogenous substances: word and image which, in the strength of a gesture or a fold, reveal that the experience of reinhabiting the body and inhabiting the word can found the world anew.

In that same dialogue, an idea of country gets recreated in O Brasil o Brasil [The Brazil the Brazil].

Invoking the thickness of the word in its apparent simplicity, the words “The Brazil” – also clipped from old magazines – are pasted on a neutral-color surface, yet different colors and typologies come across as an essay of acute political strength. Akin to “Linha do tempo,” a dimension gets turned on its head, and here, as Walter Benjamin put it, “The true picture of the past flits by.” Marilá Dardot incorporates this dimension of time into her own existence: nearly 50 years after her birth and across the history of the country, she makes her work a true relay of experience in what the most singular and personal can say to the collective.

The Libros Y series was born from the sign lettering of a Mexico City publishing house – Libros y Editoriales. The typology and material in the signage were replicated to create other associations, like possible categories in an imaginary library whose books are the catalysts to feelings and actions. The events the book can generate, in the intimate as well as the political spheres, find a new world through words: pleasure, rebellion, subversion, disaster, potencies, transformations or insurrections. The lettering indicates that the rewriting of words that compose history must be done one letter at a time – an adventure which transcends communication and meaning to touch on an inscrutable point: its “contact point with the unknown.”

The experiences that the words in the lettering carry do not target meaning directly, but scurry through the lines which, first and foremost, are bets on the subversion of language and its transfiguring power. Such transfiguring is highlighted by Roland Barthes, who argues: “All poetry, all unconscious is a return to the letter,” an adventure situated at the margins of the purported purposes of language, and precisely for that reason, at the center of its action.

Domine seu idioma [Master your language], a saying the artist found in a dictionary, takes on fresh meaning. Once again, the exploration of letters in their graphical, imagistic aspect opens doors to a dimension of language that will not allow itself to be fixated by any deciphering. A set of piled-up dictionaries with intense chromatic power, representing a paradigm whereby words perpetuate power and privilege, gets reclaimed in an unpredictable future. Words, in turn, will not allow themselves to be easily taken as pieces of a discourse. They glide, creating an ethics that points to the reverse of an imperative order.

In the cracks where poetry can be made, Marilá Dardot reinvents utopia, imbuing it with unique density. To master the language means to be able to move through time and beyond meaning: in other words, to be able to conquer the word, to honor it, to find, on the tip of the tongue, more than the promise or the hope of an ideal place: the tremor that makes us alive and recreates time. As Walter Benjamin admonishes: “To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize how it really was. It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger.”

still, ever, still

Bianca Coutinho Dias

 

Adverbs cut from magazines published in Brazil since 1973 (the artist’s year of birth) are pasted onto a neutral colored surface, forming an unruly timeline.

Adverbs cut from magazines published in Brazil since 1973 (the artist’s year of birth) are pasted onto a neutral colored surface, forming an unruly timeline.

In this series, Dardot works with stripped book covers and Letraset. With the adhesive letters, the artist creates an imaginary glossary with the qualities of words. These qualities, which appear in pairs in the work, sometimes oppose each other and sometimes complement each other, forming verses that could inhabit those vestiges of covers.

In this series, Dardot works with stripped book covers and Letraset. With the adhesive letters, the artist creates an imaginary glossary with the qualities of words. These qualities, which appear in pairs in the work, sometimes oppose each other and sometimes complement each other, forming verses that could inhabit those vestiges of covers.

In this series, Dardot works with stripped book covers and Letraset. With the adhesive letters, the artist creates an imaginary glossary with the qualities of words. These qualities, which appear in pairs in the work, sometimes oppose each other and sometimes complement each other, forming verses that could inhabit those vestiges of covers.

In this series, Dardot works with stripped book covers and Letraset. With the adhesive letters, the artist creates an imaginary glossary with the qualities of words. These qualities, which appear in pairs in the work, sometimes oppose each other and sometimes complement each other, forming verses that could inhabit those vestiges of covers.

In the installation that occupies the gallery’s main room, nouns cut from magazines published in Brazil since 1973 (the artist’s birth year) are glued onto fragments of cardboard boxes, which can no longer be reassemble as boxes.
The concepts of historical, political, affective, relational narratives and language itself detour into crisis and are there like a puzzle, to be reassembled, rearranged, resignified by the observer who, approaching and distancing himself, connects terms in a rhizomatic way.
Furthermore, the collection demonstrates the importance given to terms by the print media. Dardot says that certain words were only found on tiny scales like ‘racism’ and ‘misogyny’.

Detail of Modelo para armar (2022)

Technique: Collage of magazines on fragments of cardboard boxes

Detail of Modelo para armar (2022)

Technique: Collage of magazines on fragments of cardboard boxes