




















































33 x 42 cm each - 41 drawings
Graphite on paper and colorplus paper support
Photo VermelhoOutline of all dictionaries between Swedish and other languages belonging to the Malmö library.


variable dimensions
Glass collection and encyclopedia clipping
Photo Gui Gomes“It is traditional from southern Sweden, this glass work. A heavy glass, with straight lines, with a certain brutalism that seems opposed to the fragility and transparency of the material. As if they wanted to imitate in glass a result closer to carving in hard wood. A usual souvenir with a difficult taste, it is common to find them in any antique shop or thrift store, representing real and imaginary animals, solitary and accompanied humans, tools symbolizing occupations, from tennis rackets to fishing rods, various vehicles and iconic buildings. I have been collecting only those that border on abstraction, wanting not to be and wanting to be ice.
Inside the container that traveled from São Paulo to Santos, from Santos to Trelleborg, and from Trelleborg to Malmö, along with the books from our library, a standing lamp with three bulbs, two armchairs, and an image of Saint George, were the materials, sketches, books, and objects of a studio that had been packed for eight years. Amidst these boxes full of things that never needed to be, I found a single volume of an encyclopedia, dedicated to entries between Modern Art and Chocolates. From there, I cut out the illustration that accompanied the definition of avalanche.”
– Carla Zaccagnini


variable dimensions - 100 pieces
Frottage with graphite on 100 cobblestones
Photo Gui GomesI started making frottages in 1997 or 98. Since then, I have drawn the entire floor of the living room of my first apartment, the entire floor of the exhibition space of my first gallery, the entire floor of an institution in Germany, and even an entire street. I have drawn boxes, the explosions of a monument, and the swing of a bell before and after it rings.
A few years ago, when we walked the streets wearing masks and frequently disinfecting our hands, I thought about making stones disguised as stones. The stones that pave the streets and are thrown at windows. These are the first frottages that continue to wrap the bodies that replicate, a paper skin imitating the surface that covers. The opposite of the threat that announces that not a stone will be left standing upon a stone.
– Carla Zaccagnini


variable dimensions
Inkjet printing on paper
Photo VermelhoThese (the Dactylograms) establish a conversation with Zaccagnini’s World Words, an inventory, yet another index, of words that appear repeatedly on national anthems (soil, earth, land, country, bravery, chains, struggle). Both works perform as indexes of the symbolic construction of a nation state, of the idea of home and belonging related to the land.
Excerpt from It is the way home that moves us away, by Julieta González

38'
three-channel video installation. color and sound
Photo Gui GomesPelícula hablada is a three-channel film installation in which Carla Zaccagnini revisits her family history and portrays the migratory processes of the artist’s grandfather during the early 20th century. Through this film, Zaccagnini explores the connection between personal and social history.


5-channel video installation. Color and sound
1. The Shack – 12’21’’
2. True or False – 4’18’’
3. The Vest – 8’55’’
4. The Pot – 11’34’’
5. Black Dollars – 7’59’’
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

52 pieces in each set
Folded bills of expired currencies
Photo Filipe BerndtThe 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.

7'59''
Part of the 5 channels video installation. color and sound
Photo video still5.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

11'34''
Part of the 5 channels video installation. color and sound
Photo video still4. 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

48 x 63 cm
magazine torn on paper
Photo VermelhoIn 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.

variable dimensions
Mobile: wood, metal, diverse objects, dollar bills and lead
Photo Filipe BerndtLa 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.


5-channel video installation. Color and sound
1. The Shack – 12’21’’
2. True or False – 4’18’’
3. The Vest – 8’55’’
4. The Pot – 11’34’’
5. Black Dollars – 7’59’’
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

5-channel video installation. Color and sound
1. The Shack – 12’21’’
2. True or False – 4’18’’
3. The Vest – 8’55’’
4. The Pot – 11’34’’
5. Black Dollars – 7’59’’
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

52 pieces in each set
origami with banknotes from different Latin American countries
Photo Amant FondationFleeting Fleet is a collection of banknotes from different countries in Latin America that lost their value and were removed from circulation, meaning they no longer have any monetary worth and are now nothing more than pieces of paper.

38'
three-channel video installation. color and sound
Photo Amant FoundationPelícula hablada is a three-channel film installation in which Carla Zaccagnini revisits her family history and portrays the migratory processes of the artist’s grandfather during the early 20th century. Through this film, Zaccagnini explores the connection between personal and social history.

variable dimensions
196 different bottles, 196 hand-made rafts, 196 corks
Photo Amant FondationThis installation features approximately 200 glass bottles, each containing a raft. These bottles represent the experience of distance and displacement inherent in migrations: the possibility of living in between cultures and languages, and the complex feeling of belonging and/or being an outsider.


variable dimensions
wood, metal, diverse objects, dollar bills and lead
Photo Amant FoundationLa plata y el plomo (Money and lead) shows a collection of personal and borrowed items that are suspended in the air as part of a hanging mobile. Through this structure, Carla questions the way we commonly assign monetary value to these objects by speculating on their physical weight.

235 × 665 cm
mixed media drawings and vinyl text on wall
Photo Amant FoundationEl Gigante egoísta (The Selfish Giant) is a wall installation that includes a series of artworks on paper that were painted or drawn by Carla as a child. These works are accompanied by a text written by Carla as an adult in which she considers how history is just a collection of memories that we happen or choose to remember. For instance, would Carla’s own understanding of her personal history be different if these artworks no longer existed? How do personal objects affect your memories of the past? Through this installation, Carla returns to a central theme present in her artistic practice: the connection between forgetfulness and the histories that are written.



75 x 160 cm
leather marking pencil on paper and leather marking pencil
Photo Filipe BerndtDibujo caiman was part of the solo show ‘Mañana iba a ser ayer’, which Zaccagnini presented at MUNTREF, in Buenos Aires, in 2018, under curatorship of Lucrecia Palacios and Agustín Pérez Rubio. In the exhibition, Zaccagnini reviews her family’s history through the migration and integration processes her grandfather went through throughout the 20th century, exploring the complex intersection between subjective history and social history.
In Dibujo caiman [Crocodile drawing] Zaccagnini starts from one of her grandfather’s businesses – a tannery. The artist draws crocodiles with the same pencil the tanner used to mark the skins of the animals.
Without questioning the extractive activities that marked the 20th century – and that continue today – Zaccagnini’s loving and revisionist gesture questions other possible links with our history and with what surrounds us.


35'
Performance lecture
Photo Filipe BerndtUsing the conference format, O presente, amanhã [The Present, Tomorrow tells a series of stories connecting contemporary Brazil to its colonial past through the figure of the traitor. Stories of severed heads and pierced eyes.

variable dimensions
gold 5 grams
Photo Filipe BerndtChain, medium, by Cartier
Made by Bartl Jewelry
Case weighs 400 grams

variable dimensions
gold, 5 grams
Photo Filipe BerndtChain, medium, by Cartier
Made by Bartl Jewelry
Case weighs 400 grams

31,5 x 31,5 cm (capa/cover) - 3’57’’
Comparative study of national anthems on 12-inch vinyl paper and vinyl Photo Galeria Vermelho In World Score, of 2018, Zaccagnini created a hymn common to all nationalities from the coincident notes in the sum of the national hymns. Overlapping the various hymns, the artist highlighted the notes that coincided with being written in equal distance from the beginning of the songs, by two or more composers. Zaccagnini emphasizes her intention in the text she wrote to accompany the exhibition: “How would this new music sound when being made from what is common to all the nations; however, taken from what differentiate each one of them?”
60 x 84 cm (each) - triptych
collection of post-cards and ink on tracing paper
“(…)The invention of Europe is a collection of postcards portraying the Vesuvius in eruption. It is a collection of pictures in which this symbol of historic catastrophe is made into an image to be sent as a souvenir. The selected postcards depict the volcano either as a backdrop for a main scene, or a desirable spectacle, one that was worth the search for a perfect viewpoint to appreciate it from. Maybe it was then that Europe was invented; not when the catastrophe took place, but when this kind of tragedy (and not only those created by the Greeks) could be seen as an enacted drama, when tragedy became a backdrop in the distance, at another land, and Europe was defined as the privileged viewpoint(…)”
– Carla Zaccagnini

polyptych composed of 17 pieces
series of photographs of houses built the same and transformed over the years, in Havana, Cuba; printing with mineral pigment ink on cotton paper.

30 x 70 cm each (54 pieces)
54 anodized aluminum plates
Photo Edouard FraipontIn Alfabeto Fonético Aplicado II: pavimentaram a Panamericana e tudo o que vejo é a falha de Darien [Applied Phonetic Alphabet II: They paved the Pan-American and everything I see is the Darien Gap] (2010), Carla Zaccagnini appropriates the International Radiophony Spelling Alphabet, known as the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, currently used by aviation companies and ham radio operators around the planet.
The work proposes a new alphabet for spelling based on words whose meaning and spelling is international, but whose pronunciation is adapted to various languages and to the sounds of each country. In the first edition of the work, presented at ARCO 2010, Zaccagnini repeated the Panama Canal’s motto, “Dividing the land to unite the World.”
The current version, which occupies the gallery’s façade, perverts the previous one, pointing to a world that is not so unified, since the Pan-American Highway, which should link Patagonia to Alaska, still has an 87-km gap between Colombia and Panama (the Darien Gap), which belies the concept of unification that nourished the creation of the Panama Canal.


39 x 52,2 cm
Printing with pigmented mineral ink on cotton paper
Photo reproductionThere are many opportunities to discover that two things, at first identical, are distinct after a second and more attentive look. This is what happens in the series of photographs Sobre la igualdad y las diferencias: casas gemelas [About equality and differences: twin houses], work developed in Havana (Cuba) in 2005. In it, Zaccagnini presents groups of houses of the Cuban capital constructed in identical form, but that as a result of the time, changes in taste or habits, or to meet the needs of its inhabitants, have distanced themselves from their peers. Beyond a simple game of errors, the series seems to propose a synthesis between heterogeneous elements, pointing to the value of the remake and the transformation. On this changing background, the observer is confronted with the process of constitution of meaning and use that determines the establishment and codification of hisrelations with the environment.

variable dimensions
29 wall paintings and an audio guide
Photo Eduardo OrtegaThis piece is the outcome of the artist’s ongoing research into the violent and frequent attacks carried out by militant suffragettes on artworks and cultural artifacts in British museums during the early twentieth century. The painted frames on the walls depict the physical areas that the assaulted pieces would have occupied in the gallery, with their corresponding numbers relating to entries in the accompanying audio-guide. The spoken texts are widely varied, and include descriptions of the actions as they were reported by the press, information about the role of women British society at the time, art historical readings of the damaged paintings, and political statements made by the offending women. This work gives a spatial presence to the vandalized works while encouraging a more corporeal and multilayered version of the history of the suffragettes’ activism.

variable dimensions
29 wall paintings and an audio guide
This piece is the outcome of the artist’s ongoing research into the violent and frequent attacks carried out by militant suffragettes on artworks and cultural artifacts in British museums during the early twentieth century. The painted frames on the walls depict the physical areas that the assaulted pieces would have occupied in the gallery, with their corresponding numbers relating to entries in the accompanying audio-guide. The spoken texts are widely varied, and include descriptions of the actions as they were reported by the press, information about the role of women British society at the time, art historical readings of the damaged paintings, and political statements made by the offending women. This work gives a spatial presence to the vandalized works while encouraging a more corporeal and multilayered version of the history of the suffragettes’ activism.

46,5 x 38,2 each part of 12
12 lithographs on paper
Photo Edouard FraipontThis work examines the depiction of explosions in the Soviet War Memorial of Berlin’s Treptower Park, where concrete-cast reliefs narrate the history of WWII through allegorical scenes. Through the process of frottage, Zaccagnini reproduces and solidifies these shapeless images in an almost iconic synthesis.

collaboration with Theodor Köhler, Ayara Hernández Holz e Felix Marchand
6 editions of the book Paulo and Virgínia (Paul und Virginie, c. 1882; Paul and Virginia, c. 1882; Paul et Virginie, c. 1892; Pablo y Virginia, c. 1894; Paulo and Virginia, c. 1898; Paul en Virginia, c. 1890), carbon drawing on 120 gr Fabriano Accademia paper from the score Op. 41: Quintuor des Nègres (1809), reduction for piano, by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, as reproduced in “Collection Complete des oeuvres de Johann Nepomuk Hummel ” (Farrenc: Paris, 1825); audio recording of the instrumentation of Quintuor des Nègres, written by Theodor Köhler and played by Aulos-Streichquartett Berlin on instruments from the period of the original composition; audio recording of dance performance choreographed by Ayara Hernández Holz & Felix Marchand and presented by Felix Marchand at Haus am Waldsee, Berlin. Audio recording and editing: Daniel Matysiak

5 pieces 60 x 80 cm and 8 pieces 80 x 60 cm
Laser cut 240gr color plus paper
Photo Edouard FraipontSobre um mesmo campo [On the same field] (2011) is part of a comparative study of national flags by the artist, a project still under development. In this part of the project, figurative elements represented in flags from all countries of the world were grouped into 13 categories: Moons, Suns, Stars, Constellations, Maps, Vessels, Constructions, Trees, Birds, Mammals and Dragons, Weapons, Shields and Crowns.
Cut out from a field of black paper, these figurative elements are presented here as absence, a void in the hypothetical common space from which they might have been withdrawn before being placed in the different flags from the different countries which, one by one, they represent.


20 x 60 cm each part of 49
49 anodized aluminum plates
In Alfabeto Fonético Aplicado II: pavimentaram a Panamericana e tudo o que vejo é a falha de Darien [Applied Phonetic Alphabet II: They paved a Panamericana and all I can see is the Darien Gap] (2010), Zaccagnini appropriates the International Radiophony Spelling Alphabet, known as the NATO Phonetic Alphabet, currently used by aviation companies and ham radio operators around the planet.
The work proposes a new alphabet for spelling based on words whose meaning and spelling is international, but whose pronunciation is adapted to various languages and to the sounds of each country. In the first edition of the work, presented at ARCO 2010, Zaccagnini appropriated the Panama Canal’s motto, “Dividing the land to unite the World.”
The current version, which occupies the gallery’s façade, perverts the previous one, pointing to a world that is not so unified, since the Pan-American Highway, which should link Patagonia to Alaska, still has an 87-km gap between Colombia and Panama (the Darien Gap), which belies the concept of unification that nourished the creation of the Panama Canal.


645'
video, color and sound
Photo video stillvideo taken during the navigation hours of the interoceanic crossing of the Panama Canal, in the Atlantic-Pacific direction, between 5 pm on July 27, 2009 and 1 pm the following day

22,2 x 31 cm
Collage of paper and graphite
Photo VermelhoThe Animated Drawings series uses simple instruments of interaction to break with the traditional, that is, two-dimensional format of drawings, creating imaginary compositions that deal with the recomposition of the compositions through the displacement of their elements.

16' loop
video in two synchronized channels, sound and color
Photo video stillIn Executed Procedures / Autopilot (2008) five flight attendants repeat the gestures with which flight safety procedures are illustrated, according to the instructions that each understands among the five different languages that make up the soundtrack. In addition to providing an image of the limitations of each language, the two video chanels of the performance also point to the limitations of what would be the universal language of these technical gestures. When you see that series of actions repeated side by side, performed by different individuals, you can see the particularity behind the mechanized gestures, adaptations and personal choices behind the uniform.

100 m2
mechanical hydraulic system activated by the simultaneous use of swings, seesaws, swings and sun loungers
Designed in collaboration with Alexandre Canonico
Technical development: Daniel Dias Ferreira
Production management: Paulo Masson
Produced by Fundação Bienal de SP




22 x 32 cm - each drawing
creation of a collection of drawings through speech
Photo VermelhoThis project, conceived in 2002 and initiated in 2004, envisages the creation of a collection of drawings of views described by passersby and visitors to exhibitions and recorded by police sketch artists, professionals dedicated to making drawings based on discourse. The idea is to establish an archive of images capable of recording the ways in which the landscape is remembered and becomes a mental image and how this mental image can be transformed into discourse and translated into drawing. Through the dialogue thus established and what can be communicated in this way, an image is shared and becomes visible. Something is lost in this process and something is retained, the Museum of Views is made up of these two possibilities. Each drawing is made in duplicate, with the original belonging to the person describing each view, while the copies form the MdV collection.

Carla Zaccagnini’s practice revolves around the aesthetic politics of knowledge and the visual elements associated with them.
Her works are complex, though made with a certain simplicity of means; they are filled with tension, and their rich conceptual texture is often opaque. Working in widely different media and often utilizing documentary formats rooted in site-specific art and institutional critique, but always side-stepping the normative rules of “genre”, she examines the epistemological hierarchies and ideological underpinnings of knowledge in a broad context of cultural geopolitics and the art system.
In some respects, her strategies take their bearings from the traditions of institutional critique, but their process-based, poetic nature freely departs from the art historical canon, just as she steers away from any stable disciplinary position in tackling the subtle question of what is recognized or questioned as “art.”
Carla Zaccagnini’s practice revolves around the aesthetic politics of knowledge and the visual elements associated with them.
Her works are complex, though made with a certain simplicity of means; they are filled with tension, and their rich conceptual texture is often opaque. Working in widely different media and often utilizing documentary formats rooted in site-specific art and institutional critique, but always side-stepping the normative rules of “genre”, she examines the epistemological hierarchies and ideological underpinnings of knowledge in a broad context of cultural geopolitics and the art system.
In some respects, her strategies take their bearings from the traditions of institutional critique, but their process-based, poetic nature freely departs from the art historical canon, just as she steers away from any stable disciplinary position in tackling the subtle question of what is recognized or questioned as “art.”
Carla Zaccagnini
1973. Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Lives and Works in São Paulo (Brazil), and Mälmo (Sweeden)
Solo Exhibitions
2024
– – Carla Zaccagnini + Runo Lagomarsino. It’s the way home that moves us away – Galeria Vermelho/Mendes Wood DM – São Paulo – Brazil
2022
– Carla Zaccagnini. Contos de contas – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Carla Zaccagnini. Cuentos de Cuentas – AMANT – Nova York – EUA
2019
– You say you are one, I hear we are many – Obra – Malmö – Suécia
– Carla Zaccagnini. Mañana iba a ser ayer – Hotel dos Imigrantes – Buenos Aires – Argentina
2018
– Carla Zaccagnini: três análises e um presságio – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– U-TURN Project Rooms – ARTEBA 2018 – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Carla Zaccagnini: Elementos de belleza: un juego de té nunca es sólo un juego de té – Ladera Oeste – Guadalajara – México
2017
– Carla Zaccagnini. Posta em Abismo – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– I am also stepping on wet sand – SixthyEight Art Institute – Copenhagen
2016
– Carla Zaccagnini. Panananã – Vila Itororó – São Paulo- Brasil
– Situações: a instalação no acervo da Pinacoteca – Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
2015
– Elementos de Beleza: um jogo de chá nunca é apenas um jogo de chá – Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Elements of Beauty: a tea set is never only a tea set – Van Abbemuseum Museum – Eindoven – Holanda
– Carla Zaccagnini e Runo Lagomarsino – Malmö Konsthall – Malmö – Suécia
– Elements of Beauty – Firstsite – Colchester – Inglaterra
2014
– Shang