Artist's texts: a practical study

on Raphaela Melsohn e Maira Dietrich

Dates: May 20 and 27, June 03, 10, 17 and 24, 2026
Wednesdays
Hour: 19h to 21h
Duration: 6 meetings
Audience: general interested parties
Investment: R$ 480,00 + fees

Online course
Live, via video conferencing platform
Recorded classes available for a limited time only
Includes certificate at the end

This course proposes the discussion of artists' texts, creating conditions for us to collectively produce diverse possibilities for writing in the field of visual arts. To this end, the sessions are structured in three phases: text-telling (analysis of works), text-stitching (proposals for writing), and agora (critique of the produced texts). Each class is guided by a form of textual production within the field of art, as listed below.

We will study references to the works of artists who engage with writing, while simultaneously reflecting on the different uses of text in practical, original proposals. The idea is for each participant to produce work both inside and outside of class based on the proposed content, so that we can collectively analyze the work produced.

The course is open to anyone interested in producing and exploring the intersection between writing and visual arts, with a focus on artists' texts.

Agenda

Lesson 1 – Recipe Text

Instructions, synthesis, code, order, and sequence in the writing of artistic texts. Writing as a dematerialized work of art, especially as used in the 60s and 70s in Brazil and the United States. We will see its relationship with Minimalism and pre-internet communication and articulation movements, and the unfolding of this type of language in contemporary artists.

References: Fluxus, Yoko Ono, Vito Acconci, Lucy Lippard, Lorraine O'Grady, Laura Lima, Charles Gaines, Adrian Piper, Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner, Hans Ulrich Obrist – DO IT, Jenny Holzer

Lesson 2 – Text-Deconstruction

Gender, decolonizing and dehierarchizing writing. Language and being foreign, living language, changes arising from uses, translation. Here we approach the text as it is made and shown, with a political awareness not only of its content, but also of its circulation strategy. The works and artists who think about identity in a lively and provocative way, mixing voices of otherness, similarities and differences.

References: Latin American Mail Art Network, Denilson Baniwa, Jota Mombaça, Leonilson, Cecilia Vicuña, Paulo Nazareth, Jacques Derrida, Walter Benjamin (The Task of the Translator), Jorge Menna Barreto

Lesson 3 – Body Text

Choreography of text, performance of the word, voice, rhythm. In this module we address the intersection between visual arts, writing and the body. Works that conceive the event of the text – even when abstract – as a phenomenon intrinsically linked to the human body. Works that understand the artwork as a live event, emphasizing the presence of the body alongside the words.

References: Neide Sá, Pope.L, Keyna Eleison, Flávio de Carvalho, Trisha Brown, Renée Green, Simona Forti, Fabiana Faleiros, Elen Braga, Bruce Nauman, Louise Bourgeois

Lesson 4 – Text-Image

Meme, image-text relationship, appropriation, and forms of text circulation. In this module, we emphasize the intersection between seeing and reading: works conscious of their circulation strategy and experience. We will see works interested in the visual composition of writing, its materiality, and how the text projects itself into the world.

References: Augusto de Campos, Lenora de Barros, Ellen Gallagher, Metahaven, Mira Schendel, Glenn Ligon, Fábio Morais, Xu Bing, Guerrilla Girls, Barbara Kruger, Cy Twombly, Lennard Lahuis

Lesson 5 – Project Text

Project as artistic practice: the importance of the title and caption, notebooks, manifestos, and theses as works of art. We approach language as material for the construction of ideas and statements: works-statements in public attitude (statements, manifestos) and reflective projects that speak about their own production.

References: Ricardo Basbaum, Stanley Brouwn, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Daniel de Paula (caption “Mother”), Cildo Meireles, Robert Smithson, Peter Fischli & David Weiss (Rules)

Lesson 6 – Text-Literature

Fiction, world-building, narrative unfoldings. We conclude with works that operate at the intersection of visual arts and literature: artists who use literary strategies and writers who adopt devices from the visual arts, blurring technical distinctions between the two forms of creation.

References: Roberto Bolaño, Valeria Luiselli, Rafael RG, Nuno Ramos, Moyra Davey, Sophie Calle, Kathy Acker, Patti Smith (Just Kids), Andy Warhol (A to Z)

Raphaela Melsohn

Raphaela Melsohn is a visual artist. She holds a Master's degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University (2022) and a Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts from FAAP (2016). She taught "Printmaking on, through, and below the matrix" at Columbia University (2022). Her solo exhibitions include "Cortando linha se faz espaço" (LABOR, Mexico, 2024), "uma casa feita de chão" (Marli Matsumoto, São Paulo, 2023), and "investigações em VIDEO: registro, disposição do olhar e FORMAS DE PENSAR" (MIS, São Paulo, 2016). Among her group exhibitions are “nothing happens twice” (Circulo de Artes Plásticas de Coimbra, 2025), “Donde tejen las arañas” (Proyectos Multiproposito, 2025), “Before and Now, Far Away and Inside” (Museu Oscar Niemeyer, 2024), and “For a long time I believed I had dreamed I was free” Arte Atual (Instituto Tomie Ohtake, 2022). She has been an artist-in-residence at SURO (MX), Frans Masereel Centrum (BE), AZ West (US), YBYTU (BR), Pivô (BR), and Red Gate Residency (CH). In 2022, she was commissioned to create a public work related to Helio Oiticica's Subterranean Project at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York.

Maíra Dietrich

Maíra Dietrich is an artist and writer. Born in Florianópolis, 1988. Bachelor of Fine Arts from CEART-UDESC, Master of Fine Arts from KASK School of Arts and Postgraduate in Art by Translation at École d'Arts de Paris-Cergy and École d'Art TALM-Angers, France. She works on the intersection between body and language, through installation, performance and collage. She has presented the solo exhibitions CENA-SINTAXE, at GDA in São Paulo, Escrever sobre Ler at auroras in São Paulo, Visão Periférica at Paço das Artes, São Paulo; Spelling P at 019, in Ghent, and Peripheral Vision at MAP, also in Ghent. Notable group exhibitions include 2045 at the Palais de Beaux Arts, Paris; Cultivo at Galeria Matsumoto; Rosa Rosa Rosae Rosae at Maison Pilgrims, Brussels, Belgium; Biblioteca Floresta at SESC Belenzinho; and L'intolérable ligne droite at Galerie Art & Essai, Rennes. She participated in residencies at YBYTU and PIVÔ in São Paulo, among others.

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credits

Image: Raphaela Melsohn and Maíra Dietrich, Diplopia.