Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno
On April 6, 2017, Thursday, at 7 p.m., exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno [When I die I will take nothing, those who owe me I will charge in hell] opens at Galpão VB, and will be held through June 17, 2017. The title is taken from Miguel Rio Branco's work, and the exhibition brings a new look on the thought of Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini. Curated by Solange Farkas and Gabriel Bogossian, the show presents works by Caetano Dias, Claudia Andujar, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Miguel Rio Branco, Rodrigo Braga, Rodrigo Bueno, Runo Lagomarsino, and Virginia de Medeiros
A witty observer of the culture of his time, the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini sought to produce, in his films and texts, a critique of the then ongoing social transformations in Italy and a record of certain cultural practices that, according to him, were disappearing. In The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), for instance, Pasolini filmed with non-actors, many of whom were peasants from Southern Italy—historically the poorest region of the country—, simultaneously paying a sort of tribute to popular Catholicism and making a record of the mask in the face of the ordinary man that is marked by the work in the fields. “They are images of bodies and dissenting cultural practices in relation to the then new hegemonic forms emerging in Italy’s heterogeneous cultural context,” explains Gabriel Bogossian, co-curator of the exhibition.
The exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno absorbs this thought and places it in the Brazilian context. Here, urban populations and indigenous peoples remain threatened either by urban renovation projects that do not consider the need for social inclusion or by developments in infrastructure that make traditional modes of living not viable. In this universe, works by Caetano Dias, Miguel Rio Branco, and Virgínia de Medeiros, on the one hand, and by Claudia Andujar, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Rodrigo Bueno, Rodrigo Braga, and Runo Lagomarsino, on the other, come into contact for they all address a trance—which may be either spiritual, emotional, or erotic—sex and death, from a critical and heterodox perspective. For Bogossian, “the symbolic repertoire, a result from the dialogue proposed by these artists and its relation with non-Western religious practices, form a place of resistance for modes and ways of living that continue to exist, insisting on affirming their strength and, above all, their differences.”
Whereas the Italian filmmaker’s thought on a disappearing cultural heritage is the exhibition’s point of departure, its title reinforces the idea of death, which is also present in one of Claudia Andujar’s works, Casulo humano (rito mortuário Yanomami), da série Casa. “Death represented in Claudia’s work is integrated with the natural cycles of life, and not only of human life. This might be what we want to create at Galpão VB: a multispecies place where beings from various worlds and universes coexist, almost like a sort of abode of spirits,” he said.
Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno is organized in a partnership between Associação Cultural Videobrasil and SP-Arte, as a part of the project SP-Arte at Galpão VB, and will be part of the SP-Arte program, which will be held from April 6 through 9 at the Biennial Pavilion.
The exhibition will also hold a series of activities to expand on the questions raised by the curators. Documentaries produced by Thomaz Farkas, a guided tour of the exhibition and the Vila Leopoldina neighborhood with the artist Rodrigo Bueno and a talk with the architect and urbanist Paulo Tavares make up the three public programs, all free of charge. Click here for more details.
+ about the works and the artists
CAETANO DIAS | Feira de Santana, Brazil, 1959
The relations between body and identity and memory and belonging are some of the artist’s main research axes; he works with video, video installation, film, photography, installation, and performance. He was awarded at the 16th Sesc_Videobrasil Contemporary Art Festival (2007) with a residency at the Le Fresnoy, in Tourcoing, France. Some of the collective exhibitions in which he took part are Do Valongo à Favela, Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro (2014); the 3rd Bahia Biennial (2014); and the 29th Panorama da Arte Brasileira, at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2005). He lives and works in Salvador.
Uma
video, 2005
Uma is based on a chance event and is comprised of a single shot with no cuts, like the subjective view of a voyeur; it shows a man and a woman hugging each other in the water, at a beach. The choreography of those two bodies suggests that, at broad daylight and in front of everyone, they are making love—the "uma" [a quickie] to which the title refers. The voyeur-like and ironic camera follows them until they both get out of the water and the woman, who looks tired, sits on the sand.
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR | Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1931
Since the beginning of her career, Andujar has been interested in themes and groups that are outsiders in the dominant culture—from patients of a psychiatric hospital to people who participate in séances—, depicting the vital power of the photographed characters. Her activity as photojournalist first took her to visit the Carajás tribe and, in 1971, to be in touch with the then recently-contacted Yanomami people. Her production is recognized worldwide and is part of the collections of the most prominent museums in the world, such as the MoMA, in New York; the Maison Européene de la Photographie, in Paris; and the Instituto Inhotim, in Brumadinho, Brazil. She has published Marcados (2009), A Vulnerabilidade do Ser (2005), and Yanomami (1998), among others. She lives and works in São Paulo.
Catrimani
slideshow with selected images from the book Amazônia, 1971-1972
Casulo humano (rito mortuário Yanomami), da série Casa
photograph, 1976
Published for the first time in the book Amazônia—in partnership with George Love and currently out of print—this set of images record a fragment of the forest in its human, animal, and vegetal complexity. The sequence projected in a slideshow records a Yanomami group in a playful moment in the forest. Differently from what is seen in the artist’s most famous series, here the bodies before the camera create delicate images in which the Yanomamis play and talk, as if sharing a familiar space. Casulo humano, in turn, show part of a Yanomami death rite, in which the body is placed in a sort of cocoon attached to a wooden structure in the forest, where it remains until it is entirely dry to then be cremated; the ashes are mixed into a porridge to be eaten by relatives.
CLAUDIA ANDUJAR | Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 1931
Biographical note above.
GISELA MOTTA AND LEANDRO LIMA | São Paulo, Brazil, 1976
With a BA in Arts from FAAP, obtained in 1999, Motta and Lima have been working together since then, developing research exploring different technologies in works where concept and technique are determined together and often place the relation with the audience in the forefront. They have participated in various collective shows in Brazil and abroad, such as the 1st Bienal Fin del Mundo, Argentina (2007); the 10th Havana Biennial (2009); and A Arte e a Ciência: Nós entre os extremos, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, in São Paulo (2015). Some of their individual exhibitions are In.Situ.Ações, at MAMAM no Pátio, in Recife (2011); and Sopro, at CCBB, in Rio de Janeiro (2012). They live and work in São Paulo.
Yano-a (Wakata-ú – Terra Indígena Yanomami)
video installation, 2005
Yano-a was developed based on the appropriation of a black-and-white photograph of a burned Yanomami hut, taken in 1976 by Claudia Andujar. The artists sought to update the moment in which the image was recorded by analogically re-creating the moment of the fire and the heat refractions based on the projection of the photograph through a layer of water. In a different composition, a projector adds to the original image the animated record of flames from the photograms that documented the fire, which places us exactly in the moment the hut burns down.
MIGUEL RIO BRANCO | Las Palmas de Gran Canária, Spain, 1946
Miguel Rio Branco’s work includes paintings, photographs, films, and installations, often in the limits between these languages. His works present a violent and fragmented world that take the audience to somber areas of the social fabric and of human subjectivity. His works are shown in the international scene since the 1980s, and are included in the collections of different institutions, such as the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo; the Instituto Inhotim, in Brumadinho; the Centre Georges Pompidou, in Paris; and the Stedelijk Museum, in Amsterdam. He has published Dulce Sudor Amargo (1985), Silent Book (1998), and Maldicidade (2014), among others. He lives and works in Araras, Brazil.
Nada levarei qundo morrer aqueles que mim deve cobrarei no inferno
video, 1970-1980
Concluded in 1986, but containing material produced since 1979, Nada levarei qundo morrer aqueles que mim deve cobrarei no inferno includes photographs and audiovisual excerpts produced by Miguel Rio Branco in the Maciel district, in the Pelourinho area, in Salvador. The images depict the everyday life of local bars and brothels, as well as its residents and clients. Among fragments of this scenario, the title-sentence appears, written in lipstick on a mirror, at the end of the film.
RODRIGO BRAGA | Manaus, Brazil, 1976
Reinventing the still-life genre, Braga creates images and situations by mixing materials such as leaves, stones, bones, flesh, and carcasses of animals that defy the common perception of what’s natural and what’s cultural, of what’s real and what’s built. Some of his main exhibitions are the 30th São Paulo Biennial (2013); Extreme, at the Maison Européene de La Photographie, in Paris (2010); and More force than necessary, an individual show held at the Flanders Fields Museum, in Ypres, Belgium (2010). He lives and works in Rio de Janeiro.
De natureza passional
video, 2014
Mentira repetida
video, 2011
Sem título (pedra e tronco)
photograph, 2012
Although they were not conceived as a set, the three works brought together in this exhibition are representative of part of Rodrigo Braga’s production, which has been coherently and systematically reflecting on the relations between nature and culture in photographs and video performances. De natureza passional and Mentira repetida, in which the artist performs in the woods, relate to the forest as a possible place of foster and shelter, whereas Sem título (pedra e árvore) records a moment of the slow and silent encounter between a rock and a trunk that grows over it.
RODRIGO BUENO | Campinas, 1967
Working with installations and objects using different materials, such as iron, wood, and other organic elements, Bueno reflects about urban memory through the city’s residues. His practice includes offering workshops and collaborative activities, in addition to coordinating the studio Ateliê Mata Adentro. His individual exhibitions are A Ferro e Fogo, at Galeria Marília Razuk, in São Paulo (2016) and a solo project at ArtBo, in Bogota (2016); he also participated in the collective shows Transparência e Reflexo, at the Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, in São Paulo (2016); and Cruzeiro do Sul, at Paço das Artes, in São Paulo (2015), among others. He lives and works in São Paulo.
Emboaçava (lugar de passagem)
site specific, 2017
The site specific Emboaçava is the only work commissioned for the exhibition. It places a piece of the Mata Adentro studio inside Galpão VB. Using various elements from his artistic repertoire, such as iron bars from demolished houses and different elements of São Paulo’s flora, Bueno explores the past of Vila Leopoldina, district where Galpão VB is located, and its original role of protecting the then emerging city of São Paulo against invaders. The title of the work is a reference to the place near the current Ponte dos Remédios bridge, where it was possible to cross the Tietê river by foot.
RUNO LAGOMARSINO | Lund, Sweden, 1977
The son of Argentines exiled in Sweden, Lagomarsino explores in his installations, sculptures, photographs, and videos alternative perspectives regarding power relations in their historical dimension, often based on a reflection about the permanence of colonial heritage in contemporary Latin America. He has presented in solo exhibitions at Nils Stærk, in Copenhagen, Denmark (2011 and 2013); and at The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, in Stockholm, Sweden (2012), among other institutions, in addition to having participated in collective shows at the Museu Reina Sofía, in Madrid (2014); at the Guggenheim Museum, in New York (2014); and the 52nd Venice Biennial, in Italy, (2011). He lives between São Paulo and Malmö, Sweden.
We all laughed at Christopher Columbus
slide projects on MDF, 2003
La découverte de la Terreinstallation, 2017
One side and the other
poster, 2014
Part of a large set of works in which the artist critically addresses the role of museums based on a postcolonial perspective, these four works refer to the importance of these institutions as holders of the assets produced by colonialism and, consequently, in the consolidation of European Nation-States. In these works, the materials and images used by the artist—mainly gold and an excerpt of The First New Chronicle and Good Government (1612–1616), which is a key text to reconstitute what Inca culture was like—evoke the perverse simultaneity of the cycles of economic and cultural plundering.
VIRGINIA DE MEDEIROS | Feira de Santana, 1973
In her artistic practice, which mainly involves the use of video and installation, Virginia de Medeiros appropriates documentary strategies to re-think the modes of interpreting the other by using anthropological and ethnographic research strategies. She participated in the 32nd Panorama de Arte Brasileira, at the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo (2011); in the 2nd Luanda Triennial (2010), in Angola; and in the 27th São Paulo Biennial (2006). In 2009, she was awarded the Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais prize (2009). She lives and works in São Paulo.
Cais do corpo
video, 2015
Cais do corpo
digital print, 2015
Cais do corpo
digital print, 2015
Shot during the final stages of the most recent "revitalization" of Mauá Square, in Rio de Janeiro’s waterfront, Cais do corpo is a sort of record of the last days of the prostitution universe that existed in the area since the 1930s. Critically addressing urban design projects that result in the gentrification of different areas of cities with no social inclusion plan, the work considers the performativity of the bodies of prostitutes as a social and political practice in which eroticism and resistance are, sometimes plainly, combined.
FACT SHEET
WHAT: exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno | WITH WORKS by Miguel Rio Branco, Claudia Andujar, Virginia de Medeiros, Runo Lagomarsino, Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, Rodrigo Braga, Caetano Dias, and Rodrigo Bueno | CURATORS: Solange Farkas and Gabriel Bogossian.
WHEN: opening – April 6 (Thursday), 7 p.m. | visitation: through June 17, 2017.
WHERE: Galpão VB | Associação Cultural Videobrasil – Av. Imperatriz Leopoldina, 1150, São Paulo/SP, Brazil.