Prologue
19/08/2019
São Paulo, 11 AM
Burnout is something akin to engines overheating engines that cease to function.
19/08/2019
São Paulo, 4 PM
The day turned into night.
An immense cloud of smoke covered the sky until a murky rain of soot fell. Caused by a wildfire in the Amazon, the cloud traveled 3,800 kilometers until it reached São Paulo. A scientist said in the newspaper that this only happens with volcanic eruptions, although there are no volcanoes in Brazil.
—
In her second solo exhibition at Vermelho, Clara Ianni presents developments from her research initiated in 2022 on the relationship between capitalism and religion. The research delves into the modern myth of the separation between humanity and nature, its roots in capitalist expansion and colonial extraction, addressing two contemporary depletions, the human and the environmental, and proposes an exercise in imagining how to live beyond them: How to regenerate? How to resurrect?
Throughout the ground floor of the exhibition, from the entrance to Room 1, Tapete [Carpet] is an ephemeral memorial, inspired by Catholic Corpus Christi processions. Stemming from a tradition initiated during the Portuguese colonization period, the holiday is marked by the creation of sawdust carpets that color the streets and avenues of various Brazilian cities. With different colors, the carpets are made with designs of biblical scenes, flowers, devotional objects, and often feature local images and messages. The carpets, after being drawn and prepared for days, are dismantled as the processions pass over them.
In Clara Ianni’s work, the carpet features a large drawing of a hybrid flower, which only reveals itself when entering Room 1, the gallery´s white cube and a space traditionally revered in art. The drawing originates from the combination of two halves: on one side, the image of the Brazilwood flower cut in half and opened was taken from a botanical encyclopedia; and, on the other, a derivation of this drawing was generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, a tool used in the artist’s daily work.
Tapete brings one of the formative elements of what is now known as Brazil, the plant that gave it its name and which, due to its extraction for the production of red dye, was once declared extinct, alongside an image generated by corporate software that recombines images produced by users on a large scale, much like commodities. In this intersection, Tapete traces a connection with both past and present extractivism, questions the nature–culture divide, and proposes a celebration of the interdependence between humanity and its surroundings in the reproduction of life.
The idea of the reproduction of life and the interdependence between humanity and nature unfolds in a series of observational drawings, Union(União/Sindicato). Each set in the series starts from a plant sold as a commodity in one of Brazil´s economic cycles, such as coffee, sugarcane, and soybeans. Using an image from a botanical encyclopedia and derivations of this image made by AI software, reproduces these images with graphite in hand-drawn observational drawings on small canvases. The canvases are arranged in a manner reminiscent of a grid, taxonomy, or museum classification, but in deviant pathways suggesting unorderly ramifications and hybridizations. Union(União/Sindicato) brings together three conventions of natural representation (encyclopedic, freehand drawing, and AI-generated image) and questions the separation (Earth, the body, and machines) through the accumulation of digital byproducts, the discard of the contemporary world, the residue. The series occupies two rooms of the exhibition. In Room 1, alongside Tapete, three sets deal with the representation of the Brazilwood flower at different stages: the closed seed, the open seed, and the flower.
Time then, becomes an important factor in Second Nature: the time that unravels the carpet; the time the seed needs to develop into a flower; and, the accelerated time of technological development and deceleration.
It is within this context that What time is it? is situated, a series of sculptures that address the relationship between multiple temporalities. Past, present, future, human time, and natural time appear intertwined in rocks that have been drilled to entangle with digital wristwatches. The sculptures create a dialogue between geological time and social time, bringing together different temporal scales.
Clara Ianni returns, then, to the beginning with Second Nature, a video that gives title to the exhibition. The video is crafted from the story of Eden, which appears in the book of Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible, where a primordial man emerges as an exceptional being, separated from his surroundings, and who must “subdue the earth” and “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the creatures that move along the ground.” Thus, humanity is separated from the means of reproducing its own life and, to survive, must subjugate its environment and submit to this separation.
In Ianni’s film, shot inside the Lutheran Church of Maastricht (The Netherlands), we see this story told from within the symbolic territory of this estrangement. We witness the story changing as nature penetrates this space, first as a suggestion, a premonition that insinuates itself through the stained-glass windows of the church, until its windows are opened, allowing nature to invade and dominate the very structure of the dissemination of the word that inhibits life: the pulpit.
Over the past 15 years, Clara Ianni has worked around the relationship between politics, history in the context of late capitalism in Brazil, reflecting on the myth of modernization and its connections with colonialism, imperialism, and violence. In recent years, the artist has worked around the idea of political imagination, in the face of the instrumentalization of fear as a paralyzing device.
Thus, the exhibition concludes at its beginning, on the facade of the gallery, where the mural Inverted Apocalypse shows an image found in an evangelization book where it reads “Brazil and the Apocalypse.” Applied upside down to the facade, the image will be gradually constructed throughout the exhibition period through the performance “Work after 6 PM,” where Ianni will chisel away at the large entrance wall of Vermelho, through which hundreds of projects have passed, in pursuit of the pictorial construction of the inverted image. The work plays with the end of the world as a tool to block imagination, through fear, and as a possibility of reinvention. The work is then completed at the end of the exhibition. Or not.
Vermelho began representing Clara Ianni in 2013, after she had participated in Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann. This participation consolidated a trajectory marked by important participations in institutional exhibitions such as the 33rd Panorama of Brazilian Art at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (2013), the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); Fire and Forget. On Violence at Kunst-Werke – Berlin (2015); X Berlin Biennale (2018); Feminist Histories at MASP in São Paulo (2018); 21st Sesc Videobrasil Biennial (2019); 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021); Soft Water Hard Stone: 2021 New Museum Triennial (2021).
Prologue
19/08/2019
São Paulo, 11 AM
Burnout is something akin to engines overheating engines that cease to function.
19/08/2019
São Paulo, 4 PM
The day turned into night.
An immense cloud of smoke covered the sky until a murky rain of soot fell. Caused by a wildfire in the Amazon, the cloud traveled 3,800 kilometers until it reached São Paulo. A scientist said in the newspaper that this only happens with volcanic eruptions, although there are no volcanoes in Brazil.
—
In her second solo exhibition at Vermelho, Clara Ianni presents developments from her research initiated in 2022 on the relationship between capitalism and religion. The research delves into the modern myth of the separation between humanity and nature, its roots in capitalist expansion and colonial extraction, addressing two contemporary depletions, the human and the environmental, and proposes an exercise in imagining how to live beyond them: How to regenerate? How to resurrect?
Throughout the ground floor of the exhibition, from the entrance to Room 1, Tapete [Carpet] is an ephemeral memorial, inspired by Catholic Corpus Christi processions. Stemming from a tradition initiated during the Portuguese colonization period, the holiday is marked by the creation of sawdust carpets that color the streets and avenues of various Brazilian cities. With different colors, the carpets are made with designs of biblical scenes, flowers, devotional objects, and often feature local images and messages. The carpets, after being drawn and prepared for days, are dismantled as the processions pass over them.
In Clara Ianni’s work, the carpet features a large drawing of a hybrid flower, which only reveals itself when entering Room 1, the gallery´s white cube and a space traditionally revered in art. The drawing originates from the combination of two halves: on one side, the image of the Brazilwood flower cut in half and opened was taken from a botanical encyclopedia; and, on the other, a derivation of this drawing was generated by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, a tool used in the artist’s daily work.
Tapete brings one of the formative elements of what is now known as Brazil, the plant that gave it its name and which, due to its extraction for the production of red dye, was once declared extinct, alongside an image generated by corporate software that recombines images produced by users on a large scale, much like commodities. In this intersection, Tapete traces a connection with both past and present extractivism, questions the nature–culture divide, and proposes a celebration of the interdependence between humanity and its surroundings in the reproduction of life.
The idea of the reproduction of life and the interdependence between humanity and nature unfolds in a series of observational drawings, Union(União/Sindicato). Each set in the series starts from a plant sold as a commodity in one of Brazil´s economic cycles, such as coffee, sugarcane, and soybeans. Using an image from a botanical encyclopedia and derivations of this image made by AI software, reproduces these images with graphite in hand-drawn observational drawings on small canvases. The canvases are arranged in a manner reminiscent of a grid, taxonomy, or museum classification, but in deviant pathways suggesting unorderly ramifications and hybridizations. Union(União/Sindicato) brings together three conventions of natural representation (encyclopedic, freehand drawing, and AI-generated image) and questions the separation (Earth, the body, and machines) through the accumulation of digital byproducts, the discard of the contemporary world, the residue. The series occupies two rooms of the exhibition. In Room 1, alongside Tapete, three sets deal with the representation of the Brazilwood flower at different stages: the closed seed, the open seed, and the flower.
Time then, becomes an important factor in Second Nature: the time that unravels the carpet; the time the seed needs to develop into a flower; and, the accelerated time of technological development and deceleration.
It is within this context that What time is it? is situated, a series of sculptures that address the relationship between multiple temporalities. Past, present, future, human time, and natural time appear intertwined in rocks that have been drilled to entangle with digital wristwatches. The sculptures create a dialogue between geological time and social time, bringing together different temporal scales.
Clara Ianni returns, then, to the beginning with Second Nature, a video that gives title to the exhibition. The video is crafted from the story of Eden, which appears in the book of Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible, where a primordial man emerges as an exceptional being, separated from his surroundings, and who must “subdue the earth” and “rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the creatures that move along the ground.” Thus, humanity is separated from the means of reproducing its own life and, to survive, must subjugate its environment and submit to this separation.
In Ianni’s film, shot inside the Lutheran Church of Maastricht (The Netherlands), we see this story told from within the symbolic territory of this estrangement. We witness the story changing as nature penetrates this space, first as a suggestion, a premonition that insinuates itself through the stained-glass windows of the church, until its windows are opened, allowing nature to invade and dominate the very structure of the dissemination of the word that inhibits life: the pulpit.
Over the past 15 years, Clara Ianni has worked around the relationship between politics, history in the context of late capitalism in Brazil, reflecting on the myth of modernization and its connections with colonialism, imperialism, and violence. In recent years, the artist has worked around the idea of political imagination, in the face of the instrumentalization of fear as a paralyzing device.
Thus, the exhibition concludes at its beginning, on the facade of the gallery, where the mural Inverted Apocalypse shows an image found in an evangelization book where it reads “Brazil and the Apocalypse.” Applied upside down to the facade, the image will be gradually constructed throughout the exhibition period through the performance “Work after 6 PM,” where Ianni will chisel away at the large entrance wall of Vermelho, through which hundreds of projects have passed, in pursuit of the pictorial construction of the inverted image. The work plays with the end of the world as a tool to block imagination, through fear, and as a possibility of reinvention. The work is then completed at the end of the exhibition. Or not.
Vermelho began representing Clara Ianni in 2013, after she had participated in Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Jens Hoffmann. This participation consolidated a trajectory marked by important participations in institutional exhibitions such as the 33rd Panorama of Brazilian Art at the São Paulo Museum of Modern Art (2013), the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014); Fire and Forget. On Violence at Kunst-Werke – Berlin (2015); X Berlin Biennale (2018); Feminist Histories at MASP in São Paulo (2018); 21st Sesc Videobrasil Biennial (2019); 34th São Paulo Biennial (2021); Soft Water Hard Stone: 2021 New Museum Triennial (2021).
