Exhibition at MAM São Paulo reflects on what is elementary when relating to others.
Curated by Valquíria Prates, Mirela Estelles and Cauê Alves, the exhibit brings more than 70 collection pieces by artists ranging from painting to intervention, and has a strong connection with the museum’s educational work-
The Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo [Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo] presents from June 15th to August 13h, in the Sala Milú Villela, the exhibition Elementar: Fazer Junto [Elementary: Making It Together], a collective work that proposes reflections on what is essential when establishing a relationship with others. The exhibit is curated by Valquíria Prates, guest curator, Mirela Estelles, the museum’s educational coordinator, and Cauê Alves, MAM’s head curator, and brings to the public the intersection between the artistic and educational collections of the museum. Sponsored by Unipar and EMS, more than 70 modern and contemporary artwork from MAM’s collection...are presented, as well as poetic experiments carried out by the educational department. The exhibition invites the audience to think about the barriers to be broken in order to accomplish things together, whether they are social, cultural, political or geographical, among others, in an exercise to reflect on matters such as otherness and freedom.
“The exhibition addresses essential matters to art that are connected to MAM’s identity, such as the participation of diverse audiences and the invitation for them to have meaningful experiences. This way, MAM São Paulo is contributing to approximating the curatorship and education at the same time it is promoting modern and contemporary Brazilian art. Certainly this is one more step towards the realization of some of the museum’s strategic guidelines: to be a democratic, plural and affectionate institution”, comments Elizabeth Machado de Oliveira, president of MAM São Paulo, in the introductory text of the exhibition catalog.
Considering the idea of what is “elementary”, the curatorship departed from the four basic nature elements to select the artwork present in the exhibition. This way, the dive in MAM’s collection brings pieces that dialogue in different ways, from painting to intervention, to water, fire, earth and air, either in their materiality or in a symbolic way.
“At the museum, ‘doing it together’ is elementary. It is also the possibility of establishing situations and ways to relate to the collections and different audiences through experiences. It involves the artistic and the knowledge that art moves, puts in contact everyone that offers their attention, presence and openness to a meaningful connection. As Richard Sennett elaborated, working in cooperation presumes readiness and receptivity. The exhibit’s expography includes poetic experiences and a Do It Together Space, besides propositions carried out by artists and educators”, explain the curators in the exhibition text.
Elementar: Fazer Junto [Elementary: Making It Together] is composed of works by Anna Bella Geiger, Artur Lescher, Caio Reisewitz, Claudia Andujar, Chelpa Ferro - collective founded by artists Luiz Zerbini, Barrão e Sergio Mekler -, collective OPAVIVARÁ, Dora Longo Bahia, Edouard Fraipont & Cildo Meireles, Fausto Chermont, Frans Krajcberg, Franz Weissmann, German Lorca, Jac Leirner, Jarbas Lopes, José Leonilson, Julia Amaral, Laura Vinci, Leda Catunda, Lia Menna Barreto, Luiz Braga, Mabe Bethônico, Marcia Xavier, Marcius Galan, Marcos Piffer, Marcelo Cidade, Marcelo Nitsche, Marcelo Moscheta, Marcelo Zocchio, Maureen Bisilliat, Motta & Lima, Nelson Leirner, Paulo Bruscky, Pedro Motta, Pedro David, Regina Silveira, Rodrigo Andrade, Rodrigo Bueno, Rodrigo Braga, Rodrigo Matheus, Sandra Cinto, Sara Ramo, Shirley Paes Leme, Tarsila do Amaral, Tatiana Blass, Tadeu Jungle, Thomas Farkas and Vulcânica Pokaropa.
The expography created by architect Tiago Guimarães invites the visitor to participate and brings to the exhibit’s space an adapted furniture for multiple artistic and educational experiences. This is “Do It Together”, a space that will be built at the center of the exhibition and activated with different activities every Wednesday, at 4 p.m. The proposal is an atelier where dynamics, speeches by artists, workshops and other propositions that MAM’s educational department calls “poetic experiences” take place.
Besides the Fazer Junto [Making It Together] space, other activities in the museum’s educational agenda will be linked to the exhibit. The public can follow the full schedule through the museum’s website. In some of them, MAM Educativo [Educational MAM] will have a partnership with the Municipal Secretary of Education, which will bring teachers to participate in the activities, producing audiovisual material on their experiences to be later disclosed in the public network. The graphic language created by artist and designer Vânia Medeiros integrates to the exhibition space through a visual identity in which words are organized in curves, insinuating fluid movements and colors that bring to memory highlighter pens used to highlight words and sentences, as shown in the exhibit’s presentation.
Vânia also produced illustrations to the exhibition catalog in order to represent the poetic experiences commented in the publication. The publication, which will be available at the exhibition’s opening, is split in two parts. The catalog’s introduction features texts by Elizabeth Machado, MAM’s president, and by the curators. At the first part of the issue, the core sections are presented, with artwork images representative of each one of them, accompanied by quotes from authors that help thing about the themes evoked in this segments, such as Ailton Krenak, Marilena Chauí, bell hooks, Bruno Latour, Maria Lind, Roland Barthes, Leda Maria Martins, Humberto Maturana, Luiz Antônio Simas, Jacques Rancière, Paulo Freire, among others. The second part, entitled “To read together” is made from signed essays by Cristine Takuá, Paul B. Preciado, Fátima Freire, Antônio Bispo dos Santos and Gandhy Piorski, followed by the complete list of works in the exhibition.
Cores and elements
The exhibition is structured into six core sections that are fluidly articulate, that is, without forming rigid axes, as several pieces could be a part of more than one selection. To guide the visitor, the MAM Educativo [Educational MAM] created lists of mediating words for accessing each space, announced in the catalog as clues on maps to get to know the artwork. Each core section will have televisions that will show records of poetic experiences, propositions carried out by the museum’s educational department. In the catalog and at the exhibition, there will also be QR codes available to access these records, available in text and recorded on video.
In the first core section, “Narrativas: fluxos, conexões, transformação” ["Narratives: flows, connections, transformation”], Leda Catunda’s paintings dialogue with works of landscape in other formats, such as in Delta Del Tigre – Naufrágio, from Tatiana Blass. The space also features bold works, such as Bolha Vermelha from Marcelo Nitsche, an experiment that starts from a polyethylene conduit driven by an industrial exhaust engine. Photography is also present in Elementar: Fazer Junto [Elementary: Making It Together], with works such as the Caranguejeira series, by Maureen Bisilliat, and the Ibirapuera Park portraits made by German Lorca, present in the second and third core sections, “Redes de comunicação: comunhão, resistência” [“Communication networks: communion, resistance”] and “Território: ambiente, contextos" [“Territory: environment, contexts"], respectively.
Human action can be seen emphasized in artwork inside the fourth core section “Rastros, Registros e Tempo” [“Traces, Records and Time”], from smoke clouds by Minas Gerais’s engraver Shirley Paes Leme to the urban act of a manhole made by Thomaz Farkas in the 1940s. The relations with the environment are present in many of the pieces, such as in Folhas Avulsas #3, from Laura Vinci, made from gold leaf and brass, and the relief of a sheet paper in the work Sem título (1981), by Frans Krajcberg, that are found in the fifth core section, “Transmutação: trocas e mudança” [“Transmutation: exchanges and change”].
The sixth core section, “Jogos: regras, modos intencionais de tomar parte” [“Games: rules, intentional ways of taking part”], gathers work from artists that invite the audience to be closer to the pieces. The visitor finds interactive artwork such as Totó Treme Terra, by Chelpa Ferro, a multimedia collective founded in 1995, in Rio de Janeiro, which investigates the paths of contemporary sound art. In this core section, there will also be the work Expediente: primeira proposta para o XXXI Salão Oficial de Arte do Museu do Estado de Pernambuco, by Paulo Bruscky, which will be activated by MAM collaborators throughout the exhibition, who will use the artist's proposition as a workplace. It is also included in this section the poetic experience MAM no Minecraft [MAM at Minecraft], in which two computers will be placed in the room for the public to access and have fun with the game launched in 2021, that projects the institution's entire universe into the virtual environment.
Throughout its 75 years, MAM São Paulo has invested in training educators, in cooperation with the pedagogical department and the development and implementation of accessibility measures, being recognized nation-wide for its efforts in this area.
About MAM São Paulo
Founded in 1948, the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo [Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo] is a non-profit civil society of public interest. Its collection has more than 5,000 works produced by the most representative names in mostly Brazilian modern and contemporary art. Both the collection and the exhibitions favor experimentalism, opening up to the plurality of global artistic production and the diversity of interests of contemporary societies.
The Museum maintains a wide range of activities that include courses, seminars, lectures, performances, musical shows, video sessions and artistic practices. The content of the exhibitions and activities is accessible to all audiences through visits in Libras [Brazilian Sign Language], audio description of the works and video guides in Libras [Brazilian Sign Language]. The collection of books, periodicals, documents and audiovisual material comprises 65,000 titles. The exchange with museum libraries in several countries keeps the collection alive.
Located in Ibirapuera Park, the most important green space in São Paulo, the building housing MAM was adapted by Lina Bo Bardi and in addition to the exhibition rooms it has a studio, library, auditorium, restaurant and a shop where visitors can find design objects, art books and a line of products from the MAM brand. The museum spaces are also visually integrated with the Sculpture Garden, designed by Roberto Burle Marx and Haruyoshi Ono to house works from the collection. All facilities are accessible to special needs visitors.
Info:
Elementar: Fazer Junto [Elementary: Making It Together] [collective work by Anna Bella Geiger, Artur Lescher, Caio Reisewitz, Claudia Andujar, Chelpa Ferro - collective founded by artists Luiz Zerbini, Barrão e Sergio Mekler -, collective OPAVIVARÁ, Dora Longo Bahia, Edouard Fraipont & Cildo Meireles, Fausto Chermont, Frans Krajcberg, Franz Weissmann, German Lorca, Jac Leirner, Jarbas Lopes, José Leonilson, Julia Amaral, Laura Vinci, Leda Catunda, Lia Menna Barreto, Luiz Braga, Mabe Bethônico, Marcia Xavier, Marcius Galan, Marcos Piffer, Marcelo Cidade, Marcelo Nitsche, Marcelo Moscheta, Marcelo Zocchio, Maureen Bisilliat, Motta & Lima, Nelson Leirner, Paulo Bruscky, Pedro Motta, Pedro David, Regina Silveira, Rodrigo Andrade, Rodrigo Bueno, Rodrigo Braga, Rodrigo Matheus, Sandra Cinto, Sara Ramo, Shirley Paes Leme, Tarsila do Amaral, Tatiana Blass, Tadeu Jungle, Thomas Farkas and Vulcânica Pokaropa].
Entrada actualizada el el 21 jun de 2023
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