F THE MEETING BETWEEN THE RESEARCHERS OF THE CURRICULATORS Bitu Cassundé, Clarissa Diniz and Marcelo Campos was born a great desire to carry out a project for an exhibition that would bring together works representing the northeastern Brazil not in its caricature form, but in its totality, entering the imaginaries in around him. The project for this was already about ten years old when, almost two years ago, it was approved by Sesc to be held in the unit 24 de Maio. Thus, the three curators began to travel through all the states that compose the northeast region to update these researches. The result can now be seen in the exhibition Northeast, until August 25.
The trips for updating began in the second half of 2018, said Marcelo and Clarissa. Some of them were made in trio, others in pairs and others only one of them can carry out. “The project is the vitality of the region, which showed us other things, not just what we already knew”, says Campos. He says that the trips coincided with a very pulsating moment of the Northeast, due to the political scenario of the last presidential elections. This has made the energy of contem- porary new artists stand out in some way. The moment was also very important for them to observe a series of transformations that had taken place in the region during the last years. The curators were careful not to fall into a trap that is too easy to slip when it comes to the region: the folklore: “We said that it was not our intention to make a picture of the region, nor a panorama. At no point did we do, for example, a statistic”, commented Marcelo. In this way, the curators were allowed to cross for subjects that were triggered, in the end, in nuclei of the exhibition. They are: Future, Insurgency, (non) Coloniality, Work, Nature, City, Desire and Language.
At the same time, the exhibition was not conceived in a way that escaped the prejudices that are directed to the region and showing them is also a way of not normalizing them: “These prejudices are part of a northeastern experience”, Clarissa points out, explaining that the encounter is provocative and stirs up a series of concepts and prejudices. In the Nordeste region, there are 275 works by 160 artists, among them, such as Retirantes, by Cândido Portinari, who is part of the MASP collection, and the Manto de Apresentaçào, by Arthur Bispo do Rosário. More contemporary artists with heavy works, such as Juliana Notari, who presents the video Mimoso in the Desire sector, are also very present in the web constructed by the curators. One of the highlights is Memelito’s work, from the collective Saquinho de Lixo, which appeared as a memes page in social networks. The video brings a series of images known on the internet. Also very contemporary, Gabriel Mascaro’s work is not about shoes, reflects on the issues surrounding the demonstrations that have taken place in the country in recent years, taking as a point of discussion the manifestations of 2013, which began a more latent process of participation – tion of the population in the direction of the country. For the exhibition, were commissioned 12 unpublished works, such as A gente combinamos de não morrer, 2019, by Jota Mombasa (cover of this issue). The commissioning was, according to Marcelo, a way of breaking the vericalization of art. In addition to Mombaça, artists such as Daniel Santiago (PE), Gê Vianna and Márcia Ribeiro (MA), Ton Bezerra (MA), Isabela Stampanoni (PE), Pêdra Costa (RN), Marie Carangi Alves (PE) also carried out new work.
SESC MAY DE MAIO
Located in a very central region of the city of São Paulo, where thousands of migrants and immigrants pass by, SESC 24 de Maio has a very strong geopolitical character in its roots. The unit was inaugurated in 2017 and has hosted major exhibitions celebrating what comes from outside of Sao Paulo, such as Jamaica Jamaica, which focuses on Jamaican culture and politics, and Lasar Segall: essay on color, which presented a great collected from works by the Lithuanian artist living in Brazil.
Watch the video on À Nordeste exposure:
