Singing in the Rain

Behind the scenes at Behind the Sun: Stevie Mackenzie-Smith talks to the makers of our upcoming Brazilian art show.

“To me, the concept of ‘Brazilian art’ or even a ‘Brazilian artist’ is more fiction than anything,” curator Raphael Fonseca tells me ahead of Behind the Sun: Prêmio Marcantônio Vilaça CNI Sesi Senai, HOME’s summer exhibition of work by the winners of Brazil’s biggest contemporary art prize. “I prefer a broader term, regarding the geography of Brazil: the many ‘Brazils’ inside one geographical Brazil is one of the things that most excites me.”

Coinciding with the 2016 Olympic Games, which take place this year in Rio de Janeiro, HOME’s latest exhibition is a snapshot of a contemporary art scene, one that looks beneath the warm, stereotypical glow of Copacabana, carnivals and caipirinhas to uncover some of Brazil’s most exciting artists working today – both established and emerging.

Selected from a shortlist of thirty, works produced by the five winners of the Prêmio Marcantônio Vilaça CNI Sesi Senai make up Behind The Sun. It’s curated by Marcus Lontra, whose iconic exhibition Como Vai Você, Geração 80? (Where Are You, Generation 80?) surveyed the artistic landscape following the country’s return to democratic rule in the 1980s, and went on to launch the careers of numerous artists. Alongside runs a site-specific performance from the collective Grupo EmpreZa, whose tense work at last year’s Brazilian art prize saw a well-heeled executive apparently slipping from a rock face, runs alongside the exhibition.

A Brazilian film weekender also coincides with the exhibition. (“Perfect”, says Sarah Perks, HOME’S Artistic Director of Visual Art. “It’s July… so I’m sure it will be raining.”) And, elsewhere, the show’s other curator, Raphael Fonseca, will be taking up a residency at Manchester School of Art alongside Behind the Sun artist Virginia de Medeiros. It’s a broad-ranging show that encompasses everything from film to installation and, says Perks, “like the Turner Prize, thePrêmio Marcantônio Vilaça CNI Sesi Senai doesn’t represent everything, but is a way of getting to know certain artists and artforms.”

“How would you like to be seen by society?” was a question recently posed by Virginia de Medeiros, whose retouched photographic portraits of homeless people in Fortaleza sit with their recorded testimonies. It’s a gesture that gives them control over the public gaze they are usually subject to. Their portraits beam from the walls, the gaudy colours of their dresses and suits reminiscent of the kitsch portraits of dictators.

The performance artist Berna Reale is also represented. Working in public spaces, and concerned with the violence that’s so prevalent in her country, Reale’s work makes for uncomfortable viewing. In a 2009 performance, for example, she lay naked on a table beside a market hall, her stomach covered in intestine-like raw meat, her body watched over by circling, hungry-looking vultures. This time, a video shows her dancing to a rendition of Singin’ In The Rain, dressed in gold and wearing a gas mask. Her feet move over a red carpet that rolls through an endless rubbish dump; in the background bending men rifle through the piles in search of valuable anomalies.

“Berna Reale, Grupo Empreza and Virginia de Medeiros all work in ways that deal with the body of the other, and the body of the artist,” says Raphael Fonseca. “Through their work, we see one perspective of some of the art produced in Brazil today. Elsewhere, there is the work of Gê Orthof and Nicolás Robbio, both dealing with the limits between sculpture, installation art and geometry.”

Pink Lego, a copy of a Geografia Universal world atlas, carpet offcuts and a small glass deer are some of the miscellaneous objects Gê Orthof has appropriated for a sculpture that covers the floor like a giant, rainbow-hued ruler. Nicolás Robbio’s installation, on the other hand, is a physical grid that looks like the beginnings of an architectural draft.

The Prêmio Marcantônio Vilaça CNI Sesi Senai surveys contemporary art from across the whole of Brazil – it’s not restricted to the cultural hubs of São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro. But do the creative industries in Brazil, as here in the UK, fall victim to the “us and them” rhetoric characterising capital cities as centres at the expense of regions? “I think this happens in every country,” says Fonseca. “There are always cities with identities constructed as economic and cultural centres and others seen as peripheral. It’s important to remember that these perceptions are constructed by political interest. Nowadays digital connections between the different regions of Brazil make it possible to get to know artists living everywhere in the country. Happily, we don’t see Brazilian art as synonymous with Rio or São Paulo, but more as a melting pot of contrasting voices constituting different interpretations of what visual art in Brazil can be be.”

Why bring the exhibition to Manchester? “There’s an attitude in Brazil that Manchester has too, a ‘we don’t care, we’ll do it differently and we’ll have fun’ approach,” says Sarah Perks. Many cities clutch at pop culture in order to cement their identity; that’s true of both Manchester as a city and Brazil as a nation. “Contemporary art is such a big part of Brazilian pop culture and recent history,” says Perks. “It’s an important part of the country’s cultural psyche.”

Behind the Sun: Prêmio Marcantônio Vilaça CNI Sesi Senai runs from Sat 23 Jul – Sun 25 Sep, in partnership with Manchester School of Art and Plano Cultural and is supported by CNI, SESI and SENAI.

 

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