34th Panorama of Brazilian Art: From the stone From the land From here

How can we talk about the Panorama of Brazilian Art today and yesterday without falling, once again, into the same impasses, the same relativizations? How, on the other hand, can we emphasize today without ignoring the part of art that is falling apart due to the urgencies of a world given over to consumption and immediate spectacle? This exhibition offers such questions a new set of enigmas to ponder. And discuss. It has a double mission: first, to highlight a part of Brazilian history little known both by the general public and by artists and researchers: a significant selection of sculptures in polished stone, the first known three-dimensional manifestations, produced approximately between 4000 and 1000 BC, found in a territory that extends from what is now the southern southeast of Brazil to the coast of Uruguay. Then, present a dialogue/provocation, insofar as these pieces can motivate the works produced by contemporary artists invited to oppose this imaginary, according to their own personalities, research and means.

In the midst of the chaotic universe of our reality, apart from the violent history of domination and colonialism that we have experienced, these powerful small sculptures emerge whose original meanings have been lost, as have the people who produced them: the so-called sambaquieiros people, who inhabited the coast of a part of the territory in which we live today – in a way that we imagine to have been more harmonious and perennial than the current one. They left countless traces sambaquis (name of Tupi origin that literally means “heap of shells”) that mark the landscape and store, beneath the sand, fragments and materials accumulated over thousands of years. They also left these sculptures, which archaeologists interpret as elements of some sort of ritual and which haunt us due to their formal synthesis, the inventiveness of the volumes and the simple beauty that we learned to see in the art of the early 20th century and also with the bulging curves. of nature (the egg, the pebble, the sand dune, the pregnant womb).

Such “Brazilians before Brazil” deserve to be in our history of culture and art, whether because of their blatant attention to nature and what surrounded them, or because of the unique and enigmatic quality of their sculptures. It is in this mystery deeply rooted in the land and territory that this Panorama will engage. This is what we shared with guests Berna Reale, Cao Guimarães, Cildo Meireles, Erika Verzutti, Miguel Rio Branco and Pitágoras Lopes – artists from different generations, coming from different regions and identified with contrasting artistic research, who were urged to produce new works that reflected the Brazil of today, perhaps inspired by yesterday's, in what is inapprehensible as a concept, as well as telluric as a presence.

These are strong, pregnant, even dissonant artistic propositions. Each artist builds an ambiance with their works, whether videos, sculptures, photos, paintings, installations or projects. At the same time, prehistoric sculptures present themselves with equally surprising doses of cohesion and variety. Times and spaces clash, while local specificities and globalizing trends become confused. It is an enigma of origins and, at the same time, of impact on the state of visuality today. But why not another way of seeing the panorama of Brazilian art?

Aracy Amaral
Curator

Paulo Miyada
Assistant Curator

Prof. André Prous
Special consultancy

Artists: Berna Reale | Cao Guimarães | Cildo Meireles | Erika Verzutti | Miguel Rio Branco | Pitágoras Lopes