From September 1 through December 14, the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo is presenting the panoramic exhibition mal-entendidos, by Minas Gerais artist Rivane Neuenschwander. Curated by Adriano Pedrosa, the show features about 23 works from different periods in the last 15 years of the artist’s career, including installations, videos, sculptures and paintings, shown in the Grande Sala. Eight artworks are currently being produced especially for the exhibition, which will also include around seven works being shown for the first time in Brazil. Each of the artist’s works is based on distinct concepts for a specific formalization, which involves a continuous exercise of freedom, both in the treatment of varied themes as well as the use of different materials and media in an evident attempt to avoid a cursory and superficial categorization.
Rivane is recognized by the international press as a leading figure of Brazilian art and for dealing with complex themes of contemporary society based on simple everyday objects and situations, such as, for example, food products and handwritten grocery lists, as well as playful and household activities. Subjects such as ecology, affection, memory, childhood and individual awareness are considered in works that appropriate gestures or materials from day-to-day life that normally go unnoticed by our perception. Known for using materials such as talcum powder, coconut soap, cardboard boxes, buckets, adhesive tape, clocks, maps and soap bubbles, the artist seeks a balance between politics, ethics, affectivity, poetry and elision by also using insects and animals like ants, beetles and snails at the same time as she uses water, spices and fruits.
A highlight of her work is the strong interaction with the public, making the artworks undergo constant change and turning the question of authorship ambiguous. At MAM, priority is given to the question of subjectivity and the psychic states that arise based on the relation with power, whether by questionings about authorship and the visitor’s participation, the collaboration of professionals from other areas, or the museum’s commitment to maintain some of the pieces. The artworks are presented in a non-chronological and nonlinear way, and the architecture was carefully considered in order to densify and complexify the reading and perception of the show as a whole. The exhibition paths are laid out in a purposefully mazelike, narrow or uncomfortable way, in order to raise the visitor’s awareness concerning his or her own presence, psychic state and movement through space.
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Various works are being made especially for this show at MAM, including A aturdida (2014), with paintings based on mazes made for children’s activity magazines, but lacking both an entrance and exit, complemented by snail slime that extends through the painting, leaving its trace. Two hanging buckets in the work Sistemáticos (2014) are full of water that drips incessantly, sometimes into another bucket and sometimes onto the floor, creating an artificial cycle of dripping. This involves a systematization of the gesture, as a metaphor for borderline and repetitive situations – every four hours a worker needs to refill the buckets to ensure the reuse as well as the wastage of the water. This procedure is a subtle reference to the ecological question that also appears in Colheita (2013/14), which displays 365 handwritten grocery lists collected in London supermarkets, forming a calendar where one can observe that food products should be linked to seasons of the year rather than to consumerism.
The work (a) casos eróticos (2013–14), being shown for the first time, consists of a set of eight embroideries to approach the question of sexuality, eroticism and delicateness, themes that are also involved in Primeiro Amor (2005), a performance in which a forensic artist works in the museum to produce facial sketches based on spoken descriptions of the visitors’ first loves, resorting to technical and psychological means aimed at accessing the memory of each individual. These drawings will be shown together with another one hundred portraits produced in previous shows.
Language is involved in most of the works, beginning with Alfabeto Comestível (2001), in which 26 panels hung on the wall represent the letters of the Latin alphabet through abstract paintings made with transparent adhesive tape and various spices and food powders spanning alphabetically in different languages from açafrão and black pepper to gergelim, pepper, and finally za’attar. Presented on the floor of the same setting, Palavras cruzadas/Jornal (2001–14) consists of letters sculpted from dehydrated oranges kept in wooden boxes lined with newspaper, made available for the public to interact with them, forming words and disseminating the communication.
Playfulness is dealt with in games and fun activities for children as seen in the video A queda (2009), made in partnership with the artist’s brother, Sérgio Neuenschwander, concerning an egg-andspoon race. Playfulness is also involved in the work that lends the exhibition its name, malentendido (2000), in which an egg shell with sand as ballast floats in a drinking glass full of water, and due to the effect of refraction the submersed part appears much larger, creating strikingly different perceptions of the same object.
The museum’s architecture is considered in the work Quem vem lá sou eu / Alarm-Floor (2005), in which the hallway with a view to the outside receives a construction inspired by the wooden floors that once functioned as an alarm system in old Japanese temples and palaces. When the visitors step on the wooden boards, a sound is made by the jostling of cans, plastic cups, and metal rods stored on the floor, constructed by the musician duo O Grivo.
Clear examples of Rivane’s multiple operation are also found in the work Monstra marina (2012), where sea monsters – taken from ancient maps – are printed on coins made of pressed kitchen salt that can be taken away by the visitor, who is in charge of preserving (or not) the object, which is susceptible to humidity and time. And in the installation A Conversação (2010), listening devices record the sounds of the inspection and destruction of the space itself, to be later played back over loudspeakers in the setting, to treat on the psychic state related to paranoia and its direct association to surveillance systems.
