19:00 até às 23:00
Corpo Brasileiro in Porto (October 23 - November 8, 2020)

Corpo Brasileiro in Porto (October 23 - November 8, 2020)

Corpo Brasileiro
group art show with works by Élle de Bernardini I Andressa Cantergiani I Clara de Cápua I Janaina Carrer I Fabiana Faleiros I Julha Franz I Pedro Galiza I Raphael Jacques I Gabriel Pessoto I Túlio Rosa I Yuri Tuma I Fabiana Vinagre
Curator: Petr Hošek
Acknowledgments: Linda Toivio, Matheus Gumerato, Henrique Menezes

Opening reception : Friday October 23, 2020, 7-11 pm 
Exhibition period : October 23 - November 8, 2020

mala voadora in cooperation with Hosek Contemporary is pleased to invite you to an opening of a group exhibition 'Corpo Brasileiro. The event is kindly supported by Goethe-Institut Portugal (https://www.facebook.com/goetheinstitutportugal/).

         Corpo Brasileiro, a group exhibition of twelve artists consisting of eleven video performances or their registers, is focused on the appearance of the body and the poetry in contemporary Brazilian art. Each work represents a different approach to the question of which difficulties the Brazilian has to deal with in the context of the political, social and insecure reality of this South American Federal state today. 
	Recently, Brazilian state institutions have become more 'careful' and 'aware' of the far-right political line of the country’s president and if the curators of those cultural institutions have to decide what kind of work they expose, especially in theatre and performance art, they would rather not choose nudity, queer, political or trans-related art projects. Under those conditions, it is not a surprise that São Paulo already organised a festival of 'banned' art. When self-censorship enters the mind of the artist in order to survive and make a living, the spirit of free creation is killed. Art becomes a caricature and honesty disappears the same way as the fear comes in.
	The necessity to question the freedom of artistic creation has recently been connected to the fact that the administration of Bolsonaro is not really interested in censorship, but rather in ‘curating’ the art in line with their religious beliefs (as Sophie Foggin recently pointed out). But the struggle of the Brazilian body, especially in the selection of the works presented here, goes deeper in the past and particularly to 2013, the year when the videos from the demonstrations against the government started to appear on YouTube. 
	Túlio Rosa, whose research is deeply connected to the impact of the violence in the media on our bodies, is trying to answer disturbing questions related to our survival fight: ’How to build strategies to manage the violence that our bodies are constantly submitted to? How to talk about violence? What are the effects that the images of violence have on the body?’ A set of two videos, Experiments for a non submissive body - X4 | Side A/Side B, was created and published in 2016. The real story behind the images originates in a situation Rosa experienced himself - an assault in a French restaurant in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, where he was having dinner with friends. Four men entered the place with guns and grenades. ‘They obliged us to put our hands on the table and look down to the space between them while they robbed everything. It was a long assault, longer than usual. I had a very strong feeling that everything was happening behind me and the only thing I could do was to look to the table while it was happening. It was a strong feeling of impotence. I remember thinking of images of war, people trying to have dinner while bombs were falling outside.’ The first video shows how the body could move or position itself within the given frame - sitting and hands on the table. Blurry images of the demonstrations keep appearing in the background, similar to the smoke. The second video shows the same scene, but on the contrary explores the possibility of a choreography created only by hands, inspired by the gestures from the images of violence in the media.  
	Janaina Carrer looks inside herself in the performance Expurgação (Purge). The work created in 2014 has a set scenario: write without stopping for 1 hour on a typewriter with no chance to delete or archive and without stopping to think. Tear what has been written. Through the performance, Janaina is able to start the process of killing old traces and articulate the castrating feelings, hidden desires or rooted fears. Everything has to be faces in an uninterrupted hour. This deceleration of thoughts and transforming them into real words, with no return, no rubber, no chance to ‘review' initiates a tense, painful process. Naturally the tears come out. ‘How can I have thought this so long? Time to take the land and transform,’ Carrer describes her work.
	Another artist looking inside themselves is Pedro Galiza with the work Extrato Intimo (Intimate Extract) from 2018. Originally performed during their residency in Ubatuba, State of SP, Intimate Extract is a clip, a letter, a poem, a parade, a show, an action, a disturbance, a destruction or an experiment dedicated to everyone who believes and practices life with their autonomy. 
	Raphael Jacques, also originally from São Paulo, is portrayed in a short film from 2018 called ‘Alma’. The underground universe of the largest metropolis in the Southern hemisphere is being occupied by Alma Negrot, a performer who is part of a new generation of drag queers, which emerged and has been growing in Brazil today. The one giving life to Alma Negrot is Raphael Jacques, one of the figures of this movement that is materialised by a historical need in a country that kills more members of the LGBT community than any other nation in the world. During the night, Raphael transforms and improvises a visual provocation through his body. The exaggerated makeup serves to reveal the cry of a movement that sees in aesthetics a space for contestation. The paper eyelashes, the wiring and the plastic bags reuse garbage to make the city see the best and the worst in itself.
	The third artist from São Paulo is Fabiana Faleiros, an artist and poet also known as Lady incentivo. Under this pseudonym she takes on the role of a singer and public persona with a name satirising the Brazilian “Lei incentivo,” a law that allows the private sector to write off taxes for money invested in culture. Her video shows the recording of her project for the 10th Berlin Biennale in 2018. Faleiros occupied Bob’s Pogo Bar located on the basement level of the KW institute for Contemporary Art - a space and neighbourhood marked by urban processes similar to those witnessed in the heart of São Paulo. Mastur Bar (2015–18) was a travelling bar offering a programme of its own, consisting of lecture-shows, workshops, and a collection of objects related to the topic of female masturbation. The name of the bar is taken from the Portuguese verb masturbar, ‘to masturbate’, and it is also the title of a song and video clip by Lady incentivo, inspired by the song ‘I Feel Love’ by Donna Summer. In this project, Faleiros proposes an audiovisual exploration of the distinct performances we practice with our fingers, looking into the histories beyond the gestures that connect it to ourselves, to machines and to what we desire.
	The work Cartographic Poetry (2018) of artist duo Fabiana Vinagre and Yuri Tuma is based on concrete poetry, a movement that spread in Brazil between the 50s and 60s. Their performances seek to break with the common uses of language by bringing reading and writing closer to the body and the space. These works have emerged from the need to question the use of language in the neo-liberal context, where they can say that even language has gone through a process of gentrification and invisibility of its codes. Making poetry a cartography and with it inhabiting the urban space triply challenges the regulatory norms by putting the body in another performativity; the territory in other possible limits and the word in its most open form.
	Andressa Cantergiani and Julha Franz are two artists from the booming Porto Alegre scene. Cantergiani took over the Military Museum of Porto Alegre in 2018 with a set of performances which involved tarot, nudity, provocative words and an LGBT flag, among others. In such an environment surrounded by military cars, guns, tanks and military servants, she is creating and pointing out alternatives to those war and fascist symbols.   
	The work of Julha Franz from 2019 challenges the Brazilian law and questions the sacrality of the Brazilian National Anthem. ‘No one sings the national anthem alone. ‘Dearest Nation’ denounces the americanisation in Latin America (especially in Brazil) and plays with the notions of homeland and identity. I translated the Brazilian national anthem into English and let the revolt invade me while I was singing,’ explains Franz.
	With ‘Corpo Brasileiro’, we state that we are against censorship, violence and any political influence on art and the creative field in general. 

Text by Petr Hosek

Contact:
mala voadora 
Rua do Almada 277
4050-038 Porto
+351 934 152 264
reservas@malavoadora.pt
www.malavoadora.pt
www.hosekcontemporary.com

mala voadora is a structure financed by the Government of Portugal / Direção-Geral das Artes, and associated with O Espaço do Tempo. HOME SWAP is supported by Porto's City Council under Criatório programme
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