By Aracy Amaral
A CURATORSHIP IS NOT AN EASY TASK TO BE CONCEIVED. Especially if the number of participants is extensive, the space difficult, and great reluctance to leave aside all that could be selected. Especially when focusing on an exhibition such as À Nordeste, currently at SESC 24 de Maio. Region vast in creativity, the yearning, one realizes, was to include everything! Even if with difficulty of apprehension by the visitors of what is exposed. The idea is that nothing should escape from the curators, even if it is not digestible by the visitor, that feels wrapped in a whirlwind that pushes the eyes and ears down all the expressions of Northeastern creators not distinguishing none in particular. Thus, popular expressions, string, figurative painting, concrete painting, conceptual art, video, at all levels
and dimensions involve the visitor violently. Which feels physically and visually engulfed by the difficulty of the space cluttered in trying – in vain – to privilege one or another creator with a look that is lost by the labyrinthine assembly that is proposed to us.
The cumulative display system is preferred by some healers – but not all. And we have doubts about the correctness of this point of view. The good visibility of an included work should be a concern. Thus, suddenly discovering, in the midst of an exhibition like this one of Sesc 24 de Maio, the Retirantes by Portinari, from the MASP collection, is a surprise. As well as seeing a small Sérvulo Esmeraldo at the same time that we confessed the difficulty in locating Brennand, João Câmara, or Miguel dos Santos.
And suddenly we find Montez Magno, among a crowd of unexpected diversified creators, with no logic of presentation in space. The oppisite to the long-awaited exhibitionism that attracts a multitude of heterogeneous visitors who deserve a clear orientation to come out with a notion about the artistic expression in a region so extensive and broad in its creativity. Maybe this show settles before how one should not make an exposition (and could not have been divided into steps according to the diversity of languages?). In fact, curatorship is not an easy task to be conceived.
