Tarik Kiswanson: Limiar

As part of the France-Brazil Season 2025, and especially the French program in Brazil, the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM São Paulo) planned to present Tarik Kiswanson's Limiar project in the museum's Glass Room. The space integrates with the marquee of Ibirapuera Park and the MAM Sculpture Garden, a highly visible location even for those who do not enter the building.

Tarik Kiswanson's works are generally conceived for specific places; that is, they are not merely sculptures occupying a room, but rather they integrate into the environment and are inseparable from the location where they are installed. Initially, the artist had developed a project that presupposed a situation of complete transparency and permeability between the inside and the outside. Due to delays in the renovation of the park's marquee and the impossibility of presenting the work in the Glass Room, MAM São Paulo established a partnership with the Tomie Ohtake Institute to ensure its realization.

The artwork, originally intended to be displayed inside the marquee designed by Oscar Niemeyer, was successfully reimagined for the circular room of Ruy Ohtake's building. The artist had a short period to revise his project, and the situation of full visibility transformed into a kind of slit, a view from a specific, narrow angle, a cutout that creates a mystery. Tarik Kiswanson's work doesn't reveal itself immediately, but demands a journey through the circular room, a body that walks until it encounters it.

The notion of the body is relevant to the relationship we establish with the work, since it alludes to a body that is not there. Objects present in the room remind us of bodies, carrying memories of them, since they are absent, but still present through the forms that the artist projects. The work speaks more to our sensibility than to our intellect; that is, it is not about understanding it, about knowing that the chair came from immigration offices in Brazil, but about perceiving what is before our eyes – the visible and also the invisible to which it alludes.

It's as if the artwork suspends the flow of time, which ceases to be chronological, with a beginning, middle, and end. Everything happens as if the before and after were condensed into oval shapes, in opaque white cocoons that transform their surroundings into a kind of nest. The oval shape – beyond the idea of ​​fecundity, of the promise of what is yet to come, of life in potential – carries the sense of origin, of provenance, and transformation. Appearing fragile, it points to what is not yet, but what may come to be.

The setting features religious wooden furniture, of Belgian or Dutch origin, from the 19th century. However, the object is inaccessible to the body and outside its liturgical context – it is placed in a secular space that evokes silence. But the absence of noise does not equate to emptiness. On the contrary, it is as if this noble bench, which crossed the ocean and hovers suspended high in the room, contains not only part of colonial history, but also brings its opposite: the possibility of a critical reflection on the process of colonization. The silence of the work, more than contemplative, echoes the voices of all the peoples who were catechized, all the beliefs that were forbidden, and all the bodies that rested there, spontaneously or by force. Tarik Kiswanson's work points to that which cannot be seen or heard, but which can be felt in the bodies that stand before it.

Caue Alves
Curator

Accessibility

• Provision of catalogs in digital version that can be processed by reading and screen magnification systems (click here to access publications);
• Audio guide resources with audio description and video guide in Libras with Portuguese subtitles in the exhibitions;
• Digital Libras tool;
• Use of descriptive captions and alternative text in social media posts, with the hashtag #VideoDescription and hashtag #ForEveryoneToSee;
• Provision of tactile and multisensory materials of works from the collection

In addition to the above measures, it is possible to schedule with the Educational free guided tours with educators for the public deaf, visually impaired, physically or intellectually disabled, and users of mental health equipment and situation of social vulnerability and alternative schedules planned for public service within the Autism Spectrum Disorder according to the distinct characteristics of each subject considered in relation to: socialization, sensoriality, communicability and autonomy. Request by email educational@mam.org.br.

Sign language interpreter and live audio description for activities upon request up to 48 hours in advance, request by email educational@mam.org.br.

In certain activities, additional accessibility measures may be offered, which will be indicated in the promotional materials.