-
Talking about the artwork is doing a type of “translation” in which a lot is lost (like any translation) and part of the negative space of the work is filled by guided interpretations.
There is a quotation credited to people like Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin and Thelonius Monk, that says “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. The earliest statement that discusses the inherent difficulty of writing about music and compares it to doing something else about something appears in the magazine The New Republic on February 9, 1918:
“Strictly considered, writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics. All the other arts can be talked about in the terms of ordinary life and experience. A poem, a statue, a painting or a play is a representation of somebody or something, and can be measurably described (the purely aesthetic values aside) by describing what it represents”.
However, in all forms of art – even representative ones ¬– what makes them art is not the “content” represented but their “form”, their “historicity”, or perhaps what appears in the quote as “aesthetic values”.
Recently, because of the pandemic, a series of lives with artists talking about their works were disseminated on social media. Whenever I was invited to talk about my work, I decided to present pre-recorded videoconferences instead of a lecture with a PowerPoint with images, in a way that the references and the works themselves were mixed in a dialectical movement. With this procedure, I hoped to provide an experience for the senses that would stimulate intellectual reflection. Something between a lecture and a work, favouring sensory experience over intellectual reflection.
In Obscene Autobiography images and sounds of some of my works are overlapped or juxtaposed. A female voice narrates a story created through the appropriation of texts by authors who originally wrote in Portuguese and English – translated to Portuguese for the audio and to English for the subtitles: Guimarães Rosa, James Joyce, Anne Carson, Hilda Hilst and Pagu.
The title Obscene Autobiography is a result of the mutilation and reassembly of the titles of the two works from which most of the phrases used on the video are appropriated from, one by a Canadian author: Autobiography of red, by Anne Carson, and one by a Brazilian author, The Obscene Mrs. D by Hilda Hilst.
The term autobiography implies a mixture between the work and the life of the author, it is a self-portrait. However, every artist’s work is a kind of self-portrait. If the life of a certain author influences her work, the work also influences her life, sometimes modifying it. It can even be difficult to separate the two fields without loss for both sides.
So, every work is a kind of self-portrait, or autobiography.
Nevertheless, every self-portrait or autobiography is also a lie. Fernando Pessoa begins his famous poem Autopsychography with the lines:
The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
So, every autobiography – or even every biography – is a lie, after all it is always made with facts or images that someone has chosen, selected, edited. It is like a photograph of a situation. Susan Sontag once said in Regarding the pain of others,
“the photographic image, even to the extent that it is a trace (not a construction made out of disparate photographic traces), cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.”
The second word from the title of the video is “obscene”. One of the possible and most repeated etymologies of the word "obscene" comes from the Latin obscenus, which initially meant bad omen, having a kinship with the word obscure. In this sense, the obscene suggests the hidden, the secret or something that imposes itself on the scene to obstruct, violating vision.
Obscene can also derive from the Latin ob-caenum, which refers to something dirty, muddy, indecent and filthy, or from ob-scaenam, that is, what remains out of the scene, what is not shown in a theatrical play, what in the scene would be out of place.
In ancient Greece, the origin of the word obscene – ob skené – is also linked to the theatre. In the spatial structure of Greek theatre, at the time of Aeschylus, the skené appeared. This was, at first, a wooden cabin where the actors were getting ready to act. Later, the Greeks began to use this space in another way. There, what was considered inappropriate to show to the spectators was represented, for example, the staging of sacrifices. The audience only had an intuition of what was happening behind the scene, hearing noises and even smelling the blood of the animals actually sacrificed.
Dora Longo Bahia
26.05.2022
29,7 x 21 cm (26 pieces)
Acrylic and inkjet printing on bond paper
Photo Filipe Berndt
Variable dimensions
Acrylic paint on the wall, canvases and old tables from Longo Bahia’s atelier
Photo Filipe BerndtIn 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.
201 x 305 x 7,5 cm
Acrylic paint on the wall, canvases and old tables from Longo Bahia’s atelier
Photo Filipe BerndtThe works from the series Explosão Plástica (Inevitável), 2022, were part of the installation with the same title, where a mural painting expanded across all walls of the room where they were exhibited, and overlapped polyptych sets formed by wooden planks – which were work tables in Dora Longo Bahia’s studio, or in projects carried out by her and the study group she supervises, Depois do fim da arte (ex-Anarcademia) – with white canvases. The boards are presented full of work marks, with remains of paint and stylus marks. The mural showed the image of a huge explosion.
220 x 409 x 7,5 cm
Acrylic paint on the wall, canvases and old tables from Longo Bahia’s atelier
Photo Filipe BerndtThe works from the series Explosão Plástica (Inevitável), 2022, were part of the installation with the same title, where a mural painting expanded across all walls of the room where they were exhibited, and overlapped polyptych sets formed by wooden planks – which were work tables in Dora Longo Bahia’s studio, or in projects carried out by her and the study group she supervises, Depois do fim da arte (ex-Anarcademia) – with white canvases. The boards are presented full of work marks, with remains of paint and stylus marks. The mural showed the image of a huge explosion.
18'
2K video and stereo sound
Photo Filipe BerndtCorpo 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′
Minas took place in the context of the 32nd CCSP Exhibition Program (São Paulo, Brazil), where Longo Bahia was a guest artist.
Minas is related to Perigo!, a solo show that Dora Longo Bahia opened at Vermelho on November 16, 2022.
-
Talking about the artwork is doing a type of “translation” in which a lot is lost (like any translation) and part of the negative space of the work is filled by guided interpretations.
There is a quotation credited to people like Laurie Anderson, Steve Martin and Thelonius Monk, that says “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. The earliest statement that discusses the inherent difficulty of writing about music and compares it to doing something else about something appears in the magazine The New Republic on February 9, 1918:
“Strictly considered, writing about music is as illogical as singing about economics. All the other arts can be talked about in the terms of ordinary life and experience. A poem, a statue, a painting or a play is a representation of somebody or something, and can be measurably described (the purely aesthetic values aside) by describing what it represents”.
However, in all forms of art – even representative ones ¬– what makes them art is not the “content” represented but their “form”, their “historicity”, or perhaps what appears in the quote as “aesthetic values”.
Recently, because of the pandemic, a series of lives with artists talking about their works were disseminated on social media. Whenever I was invited to talk about my work, I decided to present pre-recorded videoconferences instead of a lecture with a PowerPoint with images, in a way that the references and the works themselves were mixed in a dialectical movement. With this procedure, I hoped to provide an experience for the senses that would stimulate intellectual reflection. Something between a lecture and a work, favouring sensory experience over intellectual reflection.
In Obscene Autobiography images and sounds of some of my works are overlapped or juxtaposed. A female voice narrates a story created through the appropriation of texts by authors who originally wrote in Portuguese and English – translated to Portuguese for the audio and to English for the subtitles: Guimarães Rosa, James Joyce, Anne Carson, Hilda Hilst and Pagu.
The title Obscene Autobiography is a result of the mutilation and reassembly of the titles of the two works from which most of the phrases used on the video are appropriated from, one by a Canadian author: Autobiography of red, by Anne Carson, and one by a Brazilian author, The Obscene Mrs. D by Hilda Hilst.
The term autobiography implies a mixture between the work and the life of the author, it is a self-portrait. However, every artist’s work is a kind of self-portrait. If the life of a certain author influences her work, the work also influences her life, sometimes modifying it. It can even be difficult to separate the two fields without loss for both sides.
So, every work is a kind of self-portrait, or autobiography.
Nevertheless, every self-portrait or autobiography is also a lie. Fernando Pessoa begins his famous poem Autopsychography with the lines:
The poet is a faker
Who’s so good at his act
He even fakes the pain
Of pain he feels in fact.
So, every autobiography – or even every biography – is a lie, after all it is always made with facts or images that someone has chosen, selected, edited. It is like a photograph of a situation. Susan Sontag once said in Regarding the pain of others,
“the photographic image, even to the extent that it is a trace (not a construction made out of disparate photographic traces), cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.”
The second word from the title of the video is “obscene”. One of the possible and most repeated etymologies of the word "obscene" comes from the Latin obscenus, which initially meant bad omen, having a kinship with the word obscure. In this sense, the obscene suggests the hidden, the secret or something that imposes itself on the scene to obstruct, violating vision.
Obscene can also derive from the Latin ob-caenum, which refers to something dirty, muddy, indecent and filthy, or from ob-scaenam, that is, what remains out of the scene, what is not shown in a theatrical play, what in the scene would be out of place.
In ancient Greece, the origin of the word obscene – ob skené – is also linked to the theatre. In the spatial structure of Greek theatre, at the time of Aeschylus, the skené appeared. This was, at first, a wooden cabin where the actors were getting ready to act. Later, the Greeks began to use this space in another way. There, what was considered inappropriate to show to the spectators was represented, for example, the staging of sacrifices. The audience only had an intuition of what was happening behind the scene, hearing noises and even smelling the blood of the animals actually sacrificed.
Dora Longo Bahia
26.05.2022
Minas took place in the context of the 32nd CCSP Exhibition Program (São Paulo, Brazil), where Longo Bahia was a guest artist.
Minas is related to Perigo!, a solo show that Dora Longo Bahia opened at Vermelho on November 16, 2022.
295 x 480 cm
Acrylic paint on linen Photo Filipe Berndt Borralho (Cubatão) and Borralho (Jaci Paraná), works from 2022 in acrylic on linen, are presented as almost homogeneous dark canvases, but which gradually warn – depending on how you look at them – landscapes hidden behind opaque layers of varnish glazes. Borralho, a term that denotes a remnant of a brazier that still burns and dyes everything gray, appears designating these surfaces, at the same time it alludes to a materiality that suppresses territories that strive to resist. Cubatão, considered the most polluted city in the world in the 1980s, showed the impact of the emission of industrial gases on the population and the surrounding biome and guides the debate that deals with the challenge of containing pollutants in the country and abroad. Jaci, Paraná, an extractive reserve in Rondônia, Brazil, that faces the invasion of land grabbers, loggers, and the advance of agribusiness, was recently named the Brazilian capital of fire, given the scale of deforestation that has plagued it in the recent scenario. Transported to the pictorial field, these landscapes-synthesis of an announced crisis, elided by erasure and coercion, act as symbols of an environmental dismantling whose rhythm is accelerating every day.
295 x 480 cm
Acrylic paint on linen Photo Filipe Berndt Borralho (Cubatão) and Borralho (Jaci Paraná), works from 2022 in acrylic on linen, are presented as almost homogeneous dark canvases, but which gradually warn – depending on how you look at them – landscapes hidden behind opaque layers of varnish glazes. Borralho, a term that denotes a remnant of a brazier that still burns and dyes everything gray, appears designating these surfaces, at the same time it alludes to a materiality that suppresses territories that strive to resist. Cubatão, considered the most polluted city in the world in the 1980s, showed the impact of the emission of industrial gases on the population and the surrounding biome and guides the debate that deals with the challenge of containing pollutants in the country and abroad. Jaci, Paraná, an extractive reserve in Rondônia, Brazil, that faces the invasion of land grabbers, loggers, and the advance of agribusiness, was recently named the Brazilian capital of fire, given the scale of deforestation that has plagued it in the recent scenario. Transported to the pictorial field, these landscapes-synthesis of an announced crisis, elided by erasure and coercion, act as symbols of an environmental dismantling whose rhythm is accelerating every day.
100 x 330 cm each
Inkjet printing, wooden frame and plexiglass
Photo Filipe BerndtOn one side, a glacial mass in a glistening celestial tone is gradually crumbling; on the other, remnants of branches and organic matter open up a dry, scorched and infertile soil to the naked eye. Between two extremes of the same hemisphere (between Perito Moreno, in southern Argentina, and the Amazon region in northern Brazil), an almost ambivalent dichotomy is created, since the apparent opposition between the two images – this supposed antagonism, both visual and as a geographical that is established between them – it dissolves little by little, reinforcing the analogy. After all, in both images one can see the same land in agony that warns of its collapse.
100 x 330 cm each
Inkjet printing, wooden frame and plexiglass
Photo Filipe BerndtOn one side, a glacial mass in a glistening celestial tone is gradually crumbling; on the other, remnants of branches and organic matter open up a dry, scorched and infertile soil to the naked eye. Between two extremes of the same hemisphere (between Perito Moreno, in southern Argentina, and the Amazon region in northern Brazil), an almost ambivalent dichotomy is created, since the apparent opposition between the two images – this supposed antagonism, both visual and as a geographical that is established between them – it dissolves little by little, reinforcing the analogy. After all, in both images one can see the same land in agony that warns of its collapse.
This series is based on female spies whose main profession wasn’t “being a spy”. They were public figures – actresses, singers, sportswomen, media stars, socialites – who worked undercover to help their countries and their causes.
The portraits are framed with steel frames and presented over old maps from The National Geographic Magazine that show – painted red – the countries involved in the conflicts in which the female spies acted.
Presented over the maps there are also a painting of a weapon used at the time of each special conflict – also steel framed; and, a silkscreened image based on a documentary image produced at the time by a war photographer.
Water-based pen, acrylic paint on paper, silkscreen on steel, iron frames, acrylic paint on map mounted on ACM board.
Photo Ana PigossoThis series is based on female spies whose main profession wasn’t “being a spy”. They were public figures – actresses, singers, sportswomen, media stars, socialites – who worked undercover to help their countries and their causes.
The portraits are framed with steel frames and presented over old maps from The National Geographic Magazine that show – painted red – the countries involved in the conflicts in which the female spies acted.
Presented over the maps there are also a painting of a weapon used at the time of each special conflict – also steel framed; and, a silkscreened image based on a documentary image produced at the time by a war photographer.
This series is based on female spies whose main profession wasn’t “being a spy”. They were public figures – actresses, singers, sportswomen, media stars, socialites – who worked undercover to help their countries and their causes.
The portraits are framed with steel frames and presented over old maps from The National Geographic Magazine that show – painted red – the countries involved in the conflicts in which the female spies acted.
Presented over the maps there are also a painting of a weapon used at the time of each special conflict – also steel framed; and, a silkscreened image based on a documentary image produced at the time by a war photographer.
Water-based pen, acrylic paint on paper, silkscreen on steel, iron frames, acrylic paint on map mounted on ACM board.
Photo Ana Pigosso This series is based on female spies whose main profession wasn’t “being a spy”. They were public figures - actresses, singers, sportswomen, media stars, socialites - who worked undercover to help their countries and their causes.<p><p>The portraits are framed with steel frames and presented over old maps from The National Geographic Magazine that show - painted red - the countries involved in the conflicts in which the female spies acted. <p><p>Presented over the maps there are also a painting of a weapon used at the time of each special conflict – also steel framed; and, a silkscreened image based on a documentary image produced at the time by a war photographer.
230 x 128 cm
Photo Ana PigossoIn her series of paintings called Fugue, Longo Bahia employs an Augmented Reality experiences where paintings leads to extra contents through the use of an phone app.
Fugue (Subject) is presented as a red brush stroke that, through the app is replaced by a video of actress Mayara Baptista screaming.
Fugues are polyphonic compositions, where one melody overlaps another. The fugues are structured by a main theme, the ‘subject’ of the composition, with which subsequent “voices” establishes variations.
The First voicedepicts portraits of women forced to leave their countries due to political conflicts or natural disasters.
The Second voiceshows hidden paintings of women that belong to the groups most susceptible to become victims of violence in Brazil.
The Third voice, pictures women that were victims of Latin American dictatorships.
Download the Fugue – Dora Longo Bahia app for the augmented reality experience available for Apple and Android.
230 x 128 cm
acrylic paint on both sides on canvas and augmented reality available at doralongobahia.org
Photo Ana PigossoAbstract paintings hide portraits – invisible to the
naked eye – of women carrying children. Some of
them were forced to leave their countries due to
political conflicts or natural disasters, others belong
to the groups most susceptible to become victims of
violence in Brazil.
To reveal the hidden paintings, Longo Bahia has
developed an augmented reality application for
IOS and Android phones. Download the app for the
augmented reality experience through the QR Code.
200 x 330 cm
acrylic paint and oil stick on canvas
Photo Edouard FraipontIn the Nuclear Accidents series, Dora Longo Bahia portrays abandoned theme parks set amid major socio-environmental disasters caused by human actions. She addresses these accidents — and the conflict among economic, political, and social interests in resolving and investigating these tragedies — through monumental paintings in fluorescent colors that do not exist in nature.
“My work is about violence: violence as subject or as form. On my early work I tried to establish a parallel between literary violence and real violence using either images from art history and literature or images and texts from Brazilian newspapers.
Then I began to consider the violence on the image itself and I became interested in how photography can deceive and what would be bad photography or a bad image in general.
I started to explore the unclear image, with no definition or considered wrong or damaged through painting, printing, photography and video. I tried to oppose idyllic images and a ‘beautiful’ painting to a poor basis and aggressive acts of destruction of the image: images of paradisiacal beaches were painted on damaged pieces of cardboard and covered with bad words, infrared photos of beaches and forests with altered colors had parts of the landscape constructed by means of scratches, paintings are peeled of their canvas and shown as scalps.
In my videos, I alternate sound distortions with idyllic images, literary texts with punk cenography. Through these acts of aggression against the paradisiacal/classical image I wanted to create a relation between the skin of things and what is beneath it.”
Dora Longo Bahia, 2021,
Dora Longo Bahia was born in São Paulo, in 1961. Her work evolves in a variety of supports: painting, photography, video, film, sound, scenography, installation, performance, graphic work and book publishing. Her works address issues related to violence arising from contemporary life. She holds a PhD in Visual Poetics from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo [ECA – USP] with a post-doctorate in Philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences [FFLCH – USP]. She is currently a professor in the Visual Arts Course and coordinator of the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at ECA – USP. Starting in 2015, she coordinates the research group Depois do Fim da Arte [After the End of Art] that investigates the social role of the artist in contemporary society.
She has also played bass in several experimental rock bands, including Disk – Putas, Verafisher, Maradonna, Blá, Blá, Blá and Cão. In 1997, her film Arquivo Ó, directed by her alter ego Marcelo Carter, received the jury´s special prize at the V Festival Mix Brasil da Diversidade Sexual, Mix Brasil, São Paulo.
In 2020, she completed the trilogy of three feature films with Petit a, Caso Dora [The Dora Case], Petit a and Antígônada.
Exhibitions:
Dora Longo Bahia has participated in a variety of national and international exhibitions and festivals, including, in 2020, the exhibition We Never Sleep, at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany; in 2019, at the Bienalsur, in Argentina; in 2018, at the 9th Biennial of Busan – Divided We Stand, in South Korea, and in 2017, at the 35th Panorama Arte Brasileira, in São Paulo; Eloge du Vertige, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France; 2011, MDE11, Museo de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia; The Spiral and the Square, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; 2010; in 2009, she was invited to make a film for the project Destricted; 2009; she received a grant from the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation and participated in the IX Biennial of Monterrey, also in 2009, Mexico. In 2008, she participated in the 28th International Biennial of São Paulo.
In 2019, she received the 7th Marcantonio Vilaça National Industry Award; in 2016, Bolsa Zum / IMS; in 2011 the CAPES Thesis Award; in 2002 the 3o Prêmio Cultural Sergio Motta – Bolsa Estímulo.
“My work is about violence: violence as subject or as form. On my early work I tried to establish a parallel between literary violence and real violence using either images from art history and literature or images and texts from Brazilian newspapers.
Then I began to consider the violence on the image itself and I became interested in how photography can deceive and what would be bad photography or a bad image in general.
I started to explore the unclear image, with no definition or considered wrong or damaged through painting, printing, photography and video. I tried to oppose idyllic images and a ‘beautiful’ painting to a poor basis and aggressive acts of destruction of the image: images of paradisiacal beaches were painted on damaged pieces of cardboard and covered with bad words, infrared photos of beaches and forests with altered colors had parts of the landscape constructed by means of scratches, paintings are peeled of their canvas and shown as scalps.
In my videos, I alternate sound distortions with idyllic images, literary texts with punk cenography. Through these acts of aggression against the paradisiacal/classical image I wanted to create a relation between the skin of things and what is beneath it.”
Dora Longo Bahia, 2021,
Dora Longo Bahia was born in São Paulo, in 1961. Her work evolves in a variety of supports: painting, photography, video, film, sound, scenography, installation, performance, graphic work and book publishing. Her works address issues related to violence arising from contemporary life. She holds a PhD in Visual Poetics from the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo [ECA – USP] with a post-doctorate in Philosophy from the Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences [FFLCH – USP]. She is currently a professor in the Visual Arts Course and coordinator of the Graduate Program in Visual Arts at ECA – USP. Starting in 2015, she coordinates the research group Depois do Fim da Arte [After the End of Art] that investigates the social role of the artist in contemporary society.
She has also played bass in several experimental rock bands, including Disk – Putas, Verafisher, Maradonna, Blá, Blá, Blá and Cão. In 1997, her film Arquivo Ó, directed by her alter ego Marcelo Carter, received the jury´s special prize at the V Festival Mix Brasil da Diversidade Sexual, Mix Brasil, São Paulo.
In 2020, she completed the trilogy of three feature films with Petit a, Caso Dora [The Dora Case], Petit a and Antígônada.
Exhibitions:
Dora Longo Bahia has participated in a variety of national and international exhibitions and festivals, including, in 2020, the exhibition We Never Sleep, at Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, Germany; in 2019, at the Bienalsur, in Argentina; in 2018, at the 9th Biennial of Busan – Divided We Stand, in South Korea, and in 2017, at the 35th Panorama Arte Brasileira, in São Paulo; Eloge du Vertige, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, France; 2011, MDE11, Museo de Antioquia, Medellin, Colombia; The Spiral and the Square, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; 2010; in 2009, she was invited to make a film for the project Destricted; 2009; she received a grant from the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation and participated in the IX Biennial of Monterrey, also in 2009, Mexico. In 2008, she participated in the 28th International Biennial of São Paulo.
In 2019, she received the 7th Marcantonio Vilaça National Industry Award; in 2016, Bolsa Zum / IMS; in 2011 the CAPES Thesis Award; in 2002 the 3o Prêmio Cultural Sergio Motta – Bolsa Estímulo.
Dora Longo Bahia
1961. São Paulo. Lives and works in São Paulo
Solo Exhibitions
2022
– Dora Longo Bahia. Perigo! – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Dora Longo Bahia. Minas – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
2020
– Dora Longo Bahia & Grupo de Ação. Lessons from Brazil – Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau – Belgrado – Sérvia
2019
– Dora Longo Bahia: ka’rãi – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Dora Longo Bahia: Choque – Galeria Pedro Cera – Lisboa – Portugal
2018
– Brasil X Argentina (Brasil e Patagônia) – Sala Antonio – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2017
– Dora Longo Bahia: Os desastres da Guerra – Pinacoteca do Estado – São Paulo – Brasil
– II Mostra Programa de Exposições 2017 [artista convidada] – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Cinzas – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2016
– PROYECTO – ArtBo – Bogotá – Colômbia
– Dora Longo Bahia – Galeria Pedro Cera – Lisboa – Portugal
2015
– Black Bloc – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2013
– Desastres da Guerra – Fundação Joaquim Nabuco – Recife – Brasil
– Passageiro – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Desastres da Guerra – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz – Ribeirão Preto – Brasil
2012
– Imagens claras x ideias vagas – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2011
– Escalpo Carioca – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2010
– Trash Metal – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
2007
– 7 pecados capitais + 92 delitos venais – Galeria Leme – São Paulo – Brasil
2006
– AcordaLice – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
– Escalpo carioca e outras canções – Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães [MAMAM] – Recife – Brasil
– Escalpo carioca e outras canções – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB]- Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
2003
– Marcelo do Campo 1969 –1975 – Centro MariaAntônia – São Paulo – Brasil
2002
– Who’s afraid of red? – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
2001
– Quand les attitudes déforment les altitudes – Forum D’Art Contemporain – Sierre – Suiça
2000
– Noname Gallery – Rotterdam – Holanda
– Crown Gallery – Brussels – Bélgica
1998
– Cité Internationale des Arts – Paris – França
1997
– Dora Longo Bahia – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
1996
– Centro Cultural Recoleta – Buenos Aires – Argentina
1994
– Dora Longo Bahia – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
1993
– Pulitzer Art Gallery – Amsterdam – Holanda
– Dora Longo Bahia – Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1991
– Dora Longo Bahia – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
1990
– Pulitzer Art Gallery – Amsterdam – Holanda
1989
– Casa Triângulo – São Paulo – Brasil
Group Exhibitions
2024
– As Vidas da Natureza-Morta – Museu Afro Brasil Emanoel Araújo – São Paulo – Brasil
– 621 e todas nós. Mulheres artistas na Coleção do Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz (IFF) – Ribeirão Preto – Brasil
2023
– Casa no céu – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Elementar: fazer junto – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Entre nós: dez anos da Bolsa ZUM/IMS – Pivô – São Paulo – Brasil
2022
– Ausente Manifesto. Ver e imaginar na arte contemporânea – Sesc Araraquara – Araraquara – Brasil
– Das Coisas Políticas e as Políticas das Coisas – Museu de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães [MAMAM] – Recife – Brasil
– Condenado ao Moderno? – Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz [IFF] – Ribeirão Preto – Brasil
– Contar o tempo – Mariantonia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Sartori — A arte contemporânea habita Antônio Prado – Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul [MARGS] – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– Ausente Manifesto: ver e imaginar na arte contemporânea – Sesc Mogi – Mogi das Cruzes – Brasil
2021
– Ausente Manifesto: ver e imaginar na arte contemporânea – Sesc Mogi – Mogi das Cruzes – Brasil
– X-Reality USP 2021 – Ressignificação da Presença (mostra digital) -USP – São Paulo – Brasil
– Língua Solta – Museu da Língua Portuguesa – São Paulo – Brasil
2020
– 7ª Edição do Prêmio Indústria Nacional Marcantonio Vilaça Palácio das Artes – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– We Never Sleep – Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt – Frankfurt – Alemanha
-Samba in the dark – Anton Kern Gallery – Nova York – EUA
2019
– em tempo – Espaço Cultural Casa do Lago [Unicamp] – Campinas – Brasil
– Narrativas em Processo: Livros de Artista na Coleção Itaú Cultural – Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (MAMAM) – Recife – Brasil
– Estratégias do Feminino – Farol Santander – Porto Alegre – Brasil
– O que não é floresta é prisão política – Reocupação 9 de Julho – São Paulo – Brasil
– 7ª Edição do Prêmio Indústria Nacional Marcantonio Vilaça para as Artes Plásticas – CNI SESI SENAI – Museu de Arte Brasileira (FAAP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– ¿Algo que declarar? – La Rural – Buenos Aires – Argentina
– Arte y Territorio – Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano (ICPNA) – Lima – Peru
– SEGUNDA-FEIRA, 6 DE JUNHO DE 2019 – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Paisajes entre paisajes – BIENALSUR 2019 – Museo de Arte Fueguino (MFA) – Rio Grande – Argentina
– Disco é Cultura – Sesc Belenzinho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Passado/Futuro/Presente: Arte Contemporânea Brasileira no Acervo do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo. Museu de Arte
Moderna de São Paulo [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Exposição Novas Aquisições no MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
2018
– Temporalidades. Arte latinoamericano. Colección FEMSA – Museo de Arte e Historia de Guanajuato – León – México
– Exceção – Espaço Cultural Casa do Lago – Unicamp – Campinas – Brasil
– Arte, Democracia e Utopia – Museu de Arte do Rio (MAR) – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Busan Biennale 2018 – Former Bank of Korea – Busan – Coréia do Sul
– Arte tem gênero? Mulheres na Coleção de Arte da Cidade – Centro Cultural São Paulo (CCSP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Festival d’Animation ANNECY 2018 – Sellerie du Haras d’Annecy – Annecy – França
2017
– Brasil: de 1500 a 2013 & Entre documentário e ficção – Cine Jóia – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– 35º Panorama da Arte Brasileira: Brasil por multiplicação – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Disco É Cultura: o disco de vinil e o toca-disco na arte contemporânea brasileira 1969-2017 – Castelinho do Flamengo – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Past/Future/Present: Contemporary Brazilian Art from the Museum of Modern Art, São Paulo – Phoenix Art Museum – Phoenix – EUA
– Here the border is you – ProyectosLA & Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA – Los Angeles – EUA
– Modos de Ver o Brasil: Itaú Cultural 30 Anos – OCA – São Paulo – Brasil
– Metrópole: experiência Paulistana – Estação Pinacoteca – São Paulo – Brasil
– Avenida Paulista – Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) – São Paulo – Brasil
2016
– Clube da Gravura: 30 Anos – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM SP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– O Útero do Mundo – Museu de Arte Moderna (MAM) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Landscapes After Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime – Hall Art Foundation – Reading – EUA
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Trust Fiction – FRAC Alsácia – Altkirch – França
2015
– Cariocas! – Exposition Renaissance Lille3000 – Lille – França
– Ruído – Oficina Oswald Andrade – São Paulo – Brasil
– Cruzeiro do Sul – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
2014
– Eu represento os artistas, Revisited – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
– Afetividades Eletivas – Centro Cultural Minas Tênis Clube – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Made by… Feito por Brasileiros – Hospital Matarazzo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Travessias 3 – Galpão Bela Maré – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Verbo 2014. Mostra de Performance Arte (10ª ed.) – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Multitude – SESC Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– 140 Caracteres – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
2013
– FotoBienal MASP – Museu Oscar Niemeyer [MON] – Curitiba – Brasil
– Suspicious Minds – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Bienal Internacional de Curitiba – Casa Andrade Muricy – Curitiba – Brasil
– I Bienal MASP Pirelli de Fotografia – Museu de Arte de São Paulo [MASP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Fundação Clovis Salgado – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
– Imaginarios Contemporâneos – Museo Tecnológico de Monterrey – Monterrey – México
– Coletiva – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Circuitos Cruzados: o Centre Pompidou encontra o MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
2012
– On_Off: Experiências em Live Image – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Utopías y realidades: arte moderno y contemporáneo en la Colección FEMSA – Museo de Arte e Historia y FEMSA – Monterey – México
– Coleção Itaú de Fotografia Brasileira – Paço Imperial – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– FLAM III [Forum of Live Art Amsterdam] – Arti et Amicitiae – Amsterdam – Holanda
– The Spiral and the Square – SKMU Sorlandets Kunstmuseum – Kristiansand – Noruega
– The Spiral and the Square – Trondheim Art Museum – Trondheim – Noruega
– Eloge du Vertige – Photographies de la Collection Itaú – Brésil – Maison Européenne de la Photographie – Paris – França
2011
– Contra a Parede – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Los Matices del Por Qué – Museo de los Metales – Cuenca – Equador
– Licht – Nieuwe Vide – Haarlem – Holanda
– MDE11 – Enseñar y Aprender – Lugares del Conocimiento en el Arte – Museo de Antioquia – Medelin – Colômbia
– Destricted.br – Galpão Fortes Vilaça – São Paulo – Brasil
– Beuys e Bem Além – Ensinar como Arte – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
– The Spiral and the Square. Exercises on translatability – Bonnier Konsthall – Estocolmo – Suécia
2010
– Livre Tradução – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Video et Après – Centre Pompidou – Paris – França
– Por aqui, formas tornam-se atitudes – SESC Vila Mariana- São Paulo- Brasil
2009
– IX Bienal Monterrey FEMSA – Centro de las Artes – Monterrey – México
– Shifting constructs – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation – Miami – EUA
– Grau Zero – Paço das Artes – São Paulo
2008
– 28ª Bienal Internacional de São Paulo – Fundação Bienal – São Paulo – Brasil
– Todos Somos Um – Escola Superior do Ministério Público da União – Brasília – Brasil
2007
– A última casa, A última paisagem – Matias Brotas Arte Contemporânea – Vitória – Brasil
– Projeto Diálogo com o Desterro – Museu Victor Meirelles – Florianópolis – Brasil
– Recortar e colar / Ctrl_C + Ctrl_V – SESC Pompéia – São Paulo – Brasil
– O Global e o Local: Vídeo e as Imagens do Insílio – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Mostravídeo Itaú Cultural – Palácio das Artes – Cine Humberto Mauro – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Mostravídeo Itaú Cultural – Instituto de Artes do Pará – Belém – Brasil
– Situ-ação: Vídeo de viagem – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– 8090 Modernos Pós-modernos etc – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
2006
– Primeira pessoa – Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
– Situ-ação: Aspectos do documentário contemporâneo – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Mam[na]oca – Oca – São Paulo – Brasil
– XII Salão da Bahia – Solar do Unhão – Salvador – Brasil
– Videometry, Video as a measuring device in Contemporary Brazilian Art – Galeria dels Àngels – Barcelona- Espanha
2005
– A imagem do som de Dorival Caymmi – Paço Imperial – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Panorama da arte brasileira –Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Vorazes, grotescos e malvados – Paço das Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– Farsites: urban crises and domestic symptoms in recent contemporary art – Centro Cultural Tijuana e San Diego Museum of Art – Tijuana – Mexico/ San Diego – EUA
– Entregravuras – Museu de Arte de Santa Catarina – Florianópolis – Brasil
2004
– São Paulo – 450 anos – Paris, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo – Brasil
– Scream – Anton Kern Gallery – Nova Iorque / The Moore Space – Miami – EUA
– Do Micro ao Macro – 6º Festival de Curtas de BH – Belo Horizonte – Brasil
– Herd -The Bag Factory – Johannesburg – África do Sul
– E-Flux Video Rental – E-Flux – Nova Iorque – EUA
2003
– Imagética – Museu Metropolitano de Arte – Curitiba – Brasil
– Seis Artistas – Centro Mariantônia – São Paulo – Brasil
– Compressores e Condensadores, Museu de Arte Moderna – Espaço Villa Lobos – São Paulo – Brasil
– Foto Arte 2003 – Brasília: Capital da Fotografia –Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – Brasília – Brasil
– Mídia Artes – Prêmio Cultural Sérgio Motta – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Goiás – Goiânia – Brasil
– Diálogos Pertinentes –Fundação Armando Álvares Penteado [FAAP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Pele, Alma – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – São Paulo – Brasil
2002
– Artefoto – CCBB – Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil [CCBB] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– Territórios – Instituto Tomie Ohtake – São Paulo – Brasil
– Coleção de Fotografia do Museu de Arte de São Paulo –Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Nefelibatas – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Marrom – Galeria Vermelho – São Paulo – Brasil
– Meus Amigos – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – Espaço Villa Lobos – São Paulo – Brasil
– Desenhistas e Coloristas – Galeria Luisa Strina – São Paulo – Brasil
– Imagens Apropriadas – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – Espaço Villa Lobos – São Paulo – Brasil
2001
– Cultura Brasileira I – Casa das Rosas – São Paulo – Brasil
– Die Photografhische Sammlung des Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – Galerie 68 ELF – Colônia – Alemanha
– O Espírito de Nossa Época – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – Espaço Villa Lobos – São Paulo – Brasil
– Pose Detida – Oficina Cultural Oswald de Andrade – São Paulo – Brasil
– Sulsouth – Voyages into mutant technologies – Camões Institute – Portuguese Cultural Centre – Maputo
– Auto-Retrato, Espelho de Artista – Centro Cultural FIESP – São Paulo – Brasil
– Fotografia Não Fotografia – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
2000
– Imagem Experimental – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– La Llama – Caracas – Venezuela
1999
– Open Ateliers – Rljksakademie Van Beeldende – Amsterdam – Holanda
1997
– VI Bienal de Havana – Havana – Cuba
– A Gift to India – Rabindra Bhawan – Nova Deli – Índia
1994
– Projeto Leonilson – Galeria Luisa Strina e Galeria Camargo Vilaça – São Paulo – Brasil
– Caderno de Artista – Livraria Belas Artes – São Paulo – Brasil
– Galeria Luisa Strina/ 20 Anos de Arte Brasileira – Museu De Arte Moderna [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
1993
– Mostra dos Selecionados –Centro Cultural São Paulo [CCSP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Braziliaanse Kunstenaars – Pulitzer Art Gallery – Amsterdam – Holanda
1989
– Coleção Particular de Eduardo Brandão – Casa Triângulo – São Paulo – Brasil
1988
– Flores – Casa Triângulo – São Paulo – Brasil
1986
– VIII Salão Nacional de Artes Plásticas –Museu de Arte Moderna [MAM RJ] – Rio de Janeiro – Brasil
– VI Salão de Arte Contemporânea – Pavilhão da Bienal de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
1985
– Eventos – Coletivas de Artistas – Salão Cultural da FAAP – São Paulo – Brasil
– Conexão Urbana – Performances – Funarte – Rio de Janeiro – RJ & Madame Satã – São Paulo – Brasil
– A Sinhazinha, o Mulato, o Negão e o Carrasco – Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
1984
– VI Mostra de Gravuras de Curitiba – Pan Americana – Curitiba – Brasil
Residences
2022 – 2023
– Hestia Art Residency & Exhibitions Bureau – Belgrade – Serbia
2004
– The Bag Factory – Artists’ Studios, TBF – Johanesburg – África do Sul
2003 – 2004
– Caribbean Contemporary Arts, CCA7 – Port of Spain – Trinidad e Tobago
2000
– Taller Internacional de artistas. La Llama, LL – Tácata Arriba – Venezuela
1999 – 1999
– Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, RBK – Amsterdam – Holanda
1998
– Residência Artística na Cite Internationale des Arts, LA CITÉ – Paris – França
Prizes
2019
– 7ª edição do Prêmio Indústria Nacional Marcantonio Vilaça 2019-2020
2016
– 4ª edição da Bolsa de Fotografia ZUM/IMS – São Paulo – Brasil
Public Collections
– Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo – São Paulo – Brasil
– Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo [MAM SP] – São Paulo – Brasil
– Itaú Cultural – São Paulo – Brasil
Private Collections open to the Public
– Museu de arte de São Paulo (MASP) – São Paulo – Brasil
– Serviços Social do Comércio (Sesc) – Sesc Paulista – São Paulo
– Coleção Figueiredo Ferraz, Ribeirão Preto, Brasil
– Colección FEMSA – Puebla – México
– Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) – Miami – EUA
– Hall Art Foundation – Reading – EUA
– Art Jameel – Dubai – Emirados Árabes
The ten days I spent in Sao Paulo, Brazil last November hardly qualify me to speak at length about the contemporary art scene in this gigantic and remarkably dynamic nation that has so often captured the popular imagination of people in other countries. None-the-less, while I was there giving two lectures at the University of Sao Paulo, I did have the opportunity to meet some major artists and intellectuals who impressed me deeply, so I would like the chance to introduce a few videos of one of these artists, Dora Longo Bahia.
Yet to introduce her is necessarily also to speak of an earlier and more shadowy compatriot named Marcelo do Campo, who apparently also produced clandestine films in the late 1960s and early 1970s at a particularly harsh moment of political repression following the US-backed military coup there in 1964. This tragic event led of course to a 21-year military dictatorship ending only in 1985 that was enormously profitable for US corporate capitalism. (Things are far more hopeful at present for the popular classes in Brazil following the election in 2002 of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party. In 2006 Lula da Silva won a landslide re-election with a large popular mandate. I personally witnessed the greatly increased spending on education nation-wide that is one of the many salutary consequences of this recent election. )
It is with this troubled historical backdrop in mind that the emergence of Dora Longo Bahia and the disappearance of Marcelo do Campo must be understood. Born in 1961, Dora Longo Bahia literally lived her childhood in the shadow of a military junta that was no friend of vanguard artists and intellectuals on the left. As if to mark the momentous transition that occurred in 1984/5, Dora Longo Bahia first emerged as an artist with the demise of the military junta during those years. In 1984, she was in group shows of graphic artists in Sao Paulo, as well as in Panama, and in 1985, her work was selected for the 8th Salao Nacional de Artes Plasticas in Rio de Janeiro. Since then she has won critical recognition in a variety of media covering printmaking, paintings, and videos (two of which we will show tonight) through inclusion in over forty group shows and over a dozen solo exhibitions, not only in Brazil, but also in Argentina, Belgium, France, and Switzerland. One of her major recent shows consisted of an intriguing presentation of the films from 1969-75 of a previously “unknown” artist, Marcelo do Campo, at the Centro Cultural Maria Antonia in Sao Paulo.
As the videos shown tonight can only intimate in an abbreviated way, her “post-medium” artistic practice (to borrow a phrase from Rosalind Krauss) is remarkably broad-ranging and, at first glance, quite “eclectic,” ranging as it does from perceptual-based and deformalizing strategies like those of Lygia Clark or Helio Oiticica to a brash engagement with mass-cultural kitsch of the US & French culture industries on behalf of a more irreverent popular response to it. Cerebral, lean, and sobering in some art works; campy, effusive, and ironic in others, she produces work that is deeply “dialogical” on several competing fronts that never quite converge. At one point using James Joyce along with the textual orientation of Conceptual art, then at another using widely circulated television shows from the US as raw material for her baroque-like visual carnivals, Longo Bahia has a trajectory that, like that of Gerhard Richter, oscillates back and forth between a discursive field framed by photography and one that is organically inflected by artisanal traces that keep the human touch in full view.
Similarly, as the videos chosen for viewing tonight will show, her work can go from minimal perceptual encounters that productively defamiliarize experience in a manner linked to Russian formalism of the early 20th century, or the New York School of the 1960s, to the type of formal excess and surplus aesthetic that kitschy image-makers find impossible to resist in the corporate world of advertising. Uncompromisingly aloof, on the one hand, and undiscriminatingly “populist,” on the other, her art work frequently counter-poses the scattered viewing inherent to the society of the spectacle with a sovereign denial of spectacle more in keeping with a Zen-like meditative state of early avant-garde cinema like that of Stan Brakhage or Kenneth Anger. In short, the dialogical interplay of these two disparate aesthetics reminds us of how she deftly negotiates a contemporary situation once identified by the German philosopher Theodore Adorno (and still valid today), namely, that the fine arts and mass culture remain torn halves of a culture that fails to add up to a coherent whole — far all their undeniable vitality and compelling promise of something otherwise.
**As for Marcelo do Campo, I will say no more about this mysterious figure, than to point out that Dora Longo Bahia “rediscovered” his oeuvre. It is an oeuvre which now serves as a monument to the “unknown artist” at a time when mainstream society, especially in the US, remains more interested in “monuments to unknown soldiers.”
Dora Longo Bahía.
José Roca: En tu trabajo has incluido manifestaciones culturales marginales, mezclando referencias populares y eruditas. ¿Crees que en arte hay un “afuera” y un “adentro”? En caso afirmativo, ¿cómo establecer puentes, mezclas, contaminaciones?
Dora Longo Bahía: Não acredito que haja “fora” ou “dentro”. Já está tudo contaminado.
JR: Es cierto, aunque la cultura de la calle no es la misma del medio artístico, así haya cruces. ¿Podrías hablar de tu proyecto de radio para la Bienal?
DLB: Quero fazer 7 programas de rádio de 30 minutos, veiculados, se possível na freqüência AM, com “entrevistas musicais” feitas por minha banda OsMacaco com alguns dos participantes da Bienal. A Rádio Macaco seria uma sessão de improvisos, experimentações, desvios, como acontece nos bastidores de um ensaio de rock. Fizemos a proposta para a rádio Eldorado AM, que é uma das rádios de maior alcance do Brasil, mas a diretora artística refutou a idéia porque, segundo ela, tanto a Eldorado AM quanto a FM, “falam para um público adulto classe A e B”. Fiquei chateada por ter sido chamada de retardada, mas fiquei desapontada, principalmente, com a posição preconceituosa e elitista da diretora artística da Eldorado. Como, hoje em dia, num país como o Brasil, uma grande rádio não tem vergonha de falar, exclusivamente, para as classes A e B?
JR: Sobre todo la radio, que es, al menos en su difusión, un medio más democrático y de mayor penetración potencial. Lo interesante de la radio es que obliga a formarse una imagen mental, a imaginar, en su sentido etimológico. En tu trabajo pictórico tomas imágenes que están ancladas en la memoria colectiva, es decir, presentes aunque imprecisas, y a pesar de que las materializas, mantienes un grado de indeterminación y ambiguedad. ¿Quisieras referirte al proceso que conduce a tus “escalpos”?
DLB: Os escalpos são uma série de pinturas “sem carne”. Arranco a película de tinta de seu suporte original e aplico-a sobre um outro lugar: uma parede, uma página de jornal, um tapume de madeira, uma placa de cimento, um pedaço de papelão, ou, no caso da bienal, o chão. Escolho imagens paradigmáticas de lugares controversos, tiradas de cartões postais, jornais ou livros, que são amassadas e mutiladas ao serem arrancadas e reaplicadas sobre outro corpo. Quero que a pintura revele a perversidade da fascinação pela imagem, pela aparência, pelo espetáculo.
JR: Lo que sucedió con Eldorado es indicativo que, efectivamente, hay claras estratificaciones sociales inclusive en el medio de la cultura, que se supone es más abierto y tolerante. ¿Tiene el arte alguna posibilidad de romper así sea mínimamente esta situación, o a lo máximo que puede aspirar es a señalar? ¿Cuál es el margen de agencia política del arte?
DLB: É, infelizmente o mundo está cheio de preconceitos e ignorância. Não sei se a arte pode acabar com essa situação, já que ela sempre se relacionou amigavelmente com os sistemas de poder… Mas, acredito que toda arte é uma ação política (política definida como a arte de lidar com a cidade [do grego politikê: tékhné {arte } e polis {cidade}], agir sobre a sociedade, questionar paradigmas, sinalizar novas formas de organização, preconizar mudanças).
Considero a arte política mesmo quando o artista que a produz reivindica uma posição apolític