the landscape as a political body

on Andre Komatsu

Dates: July 21, 28, August 04, 11 and 18, 2025
Mondays
Time: from 19h30 to 21h30
Duration: 05 meetings
Audience: general interested parties
Investment: R $ 400,00

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

This course explores how contemporary artistic practices – including installation, site-specific, happenings and performances – activate public and private space as a field of tension and questioning. Through the analysis of works by modern and contemporary artists, participants will be invited to reflect on how art intervenes in the organization of urban space, destabilizes consolidated structures and proposes new forms of occupation and engagement. Through theoretical discussions and practical exercises, the course seeks to expand understanding of the role of the artist in the symbolic and material construction of territory.

Agenda

Class 01: Landscape as discourse I

This class introduces the landscape as a field of symbolic and material dispute, exploring how art reflects and questions economic, political and social transformations. Drawing on the works of Hans Haacke, Mark Lombardi, Edwin Sanchez and Santiago Sierra, we will discuss how different artistic strategies – from investigations into networks of power to critical interventions in public space – strain the relationships between art, the market and institutions. By analyzing these works, participants will be invited to reflect on the role of the artist in revealing and reconfiguring contemporary landscapes.

Class 02: Landscape as discourse II

Analysis of the landscape as a political and social construction. Based on the artists studied, we will explore how different artistic approaches highlight the forces that shape urban and institutional space. The class will also open space for critical reflections and exchanges between participants, encouraging connections between the examples presented and the contemporary context.

Class 03: Claudia Andujar and land art

This class proposes a dialogue between the work of Claudia Andujar and leading figures in Land Art, such as Robert Smithson, Michael Heizer and Walter De Maria. While Land Art artists operate on a large scale in the natural environment, questioning the boundaries between art and landscape, Andujar uses photography as a tool to engage in the struggle for the demarcation of Yanomami territory. Based on this conceptual connection, we will investigate how different artistic practices can act in the construction of narratives about territory, land occupation and the power relations that permeate these spaces.

Class 04: The body and the environment

In this class, we will explore how the body becomes an agent of transformation and questioning of the environment in artistic practices that tension the boundaries between the individual and the space. Based on the works of Ana Mendieta, Teresa Margolles, Minerva Cuevas and Tehching Hsieh, we will analyze how performative actions, interventions and everyday rituals resignify social and political landscapes. The body, here, is both material and language, articulating new forms of perception and engagement with the environment.

Class 05: The construction of reality

This class explores how art can question and reshape the notion of reality through media, social control, and memory. Drawing on the practices of Ztohoven, Chris Burden, Mona Hatoum, and Doris Salcedo, we will examine strategies that range from infiltration of mass media outlets to interventions that highlight power dynamics and official narratives. Through these artists, we will discuss how art can strain the boundaries between fact and fiction, presence and absence, creating new layers of meaning over reality.

André Komatsu

(São Paulo, SP, Brazil, 1978)

André Komatsu (1978) was born in São Paulo and currently lives and works in the city. He is a visual artist and educator. He is part of the generation that grew up with the return of democracy in Brazil and saw neoliberalism implemented by economic policies in the 1990s. It is in this context that his work was born, whose research questions the different ways in which individuals act in the world, the way they deal with urban space and with established powers. Graduated in visual arts from FAAP, he has held solo exhibitions such as Ordem Casual, at Futurdome, in Milan (2018); When the sun falls down, at Cont(in)una Project/Galleria Continua, in Beijing (2017); Construção de Valores, at Red Bull Station, in São Paulo (2017). He has participated in group shows such as Navalha na carne, at Paglione D'Arte Contemporanea (PAC), in Milan (2018); Troposphere, at Beijing Minsheng Art Museum, in Beijing (2017); Avenida Paulista, at MASP, in São Paulo (2017); So much that it doesn't fit here – 56th Venice Biennale, Brazilian Pavilion, in Venice (2015); Biennale of the Americas, at MCA Denver in Colorado (2015); Beyond the Supersquare, at the Bronx Museum of Art, in New York (2014); Sextanisquatsi – Desorden habitable, 10th Monterrey Biennale, MARCO, Monterrey (2012).

MAM friend has 20% discount. Be part!
Students, teachers and retirees have a 10% discount
Doubts:
cursos@mam.org.br
WhatsApp: 11 99774 3987

By participating in this activity/event, you authorize, free of charge and definitively, MAM – Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, to use your image, voice, biographical data and characteristic signs, captured in video, audio, photography and prints, for the purposes of recording, disseminating and promoting the Museum's activities, in any means, vehicles, supports, media, methods and technologies, tangible or intangible. If you do not want your image to be disclosed, please inform MAM (cursos@mam.org.br)

credits: André Komatsu, Atlas, 2007. Wood, t-shirt and screw, 330 × 50 × 70 cm. Photo: Edouard Fraipont