Blacks in the Pool
12/07/2022 — 05/14/2023
Pinacoteca do Ceará, Fortaleza, CE
Blacks in the Pool immediately conjures up a subversive image. The idea of certain bodies being present in spaces that they have not been accustomed to occupying in the history of Brazil. Places of entertainment and relaxation, but not only this. The pool can also be seen to represent a decent home, food on the table, or access to good healthcare and education. The pool represents many things: partying and working, enjoyment and safety. The phrase also conjures up the idea of a desire and a need for a revolt against prohibitions. Against the impediments to the leading of a full life put in place by centuries of colonization and its more recent ramifications. Against the predations of certain groups and their descendants. It is a call to protest against the processes that have produced, over time, unequal opportunities for white and non-white bodies in their quest for autonomy. An asymmetry that is therefore grounded in the ethnic identity of each and every inhabitant of Brazil and in the color of their skin.
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Public Sector Artistic Residency 2021-2022
December/2021 —
December
/ 2022
Secretaria Municipal de Cultura do Rio de Janeiro, RJ
The Public Sector Artistic Residency [RASP] immerses artists in Brazilian public institutions to collaborate with their staff. In its third edition, for the first time, two artists participated simultaneously: Anna Costa e Silva and Rafa Éis, who worked at the Municipal Department of Culture of Rio de Janeiro. Seeking to build connections with employees, they developed individual and collective proposals, leading to the SECRIA [Artistic Creations Sector] project inside the Department of Culture. This creative space within the Secretariat hosted activities such as film clubs, poetry gatherings, and the Forms of Breathing project.
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See more of Anna Costa e Silva’s and Rafa Éis’ processes here.
Van Gogh and his contemporaries: an immersive exhibition
04/06/2022 —
06/05/2022
Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Van Gogh and his Contemporaries: An Immersive Exhibition aims to provide an experience of sensory immersion in the life and work of the Dutch painter, who was one of the greatest artists of the 19th century, guiding visitors through a digital experience involving 360° projections and an original soundtrack. The content of a 60-minute narrative involves the audience in the life and work of the painter, as well as encouraging a viewing of the works of other great names whose works bear some relation to Van Gogh’s, including Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Soutine and Modigliani. Visitors are given the opportunity to delve into the history of the artist through explanatory texts and a timeline of the life of Van Gogh. Viewers find themselves immersed in gigantic images, created by multiple projectors through a system that adapts the screens to the exhibition space and provides the sensation of being inside the paintings of one of the world’s most famous and most beloved artists.
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Mixtures
05/07/2022 — 08/13/2022
Galpão Bela Maré, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
The Mixtures exhibition celebrates the first decade of Galpão Bela Maré, by proposing points of reference and forms of materiality that bring different generations and temporalities together to enter into dialogue with the territory, with the space and its unique features. The curatorship involves 19 artists who have helped to put together the history of artistic production in the Favelas da Maré Complex and the show includes many of the greatest achievements of the Center’s creative and educational work over the past ten years. In the words of Jean Carlos Azuos, this meeting brings together the different kinds of corporeality, poetics and geography upon which the ideas and aims of Galpão Bela Maré are based. This is a show made of symbols that presents an overview of a decade of major achievements and experiences in the field of the visual arts in Brazil and that aims to promote the development of broader horizons in matters related to the area’s survival, expansion and population growth.
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Catalogue
Ecologies of Good Living
10/22/2022 — 12/10/2022
Galpão Bela Maré, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
This exhibition is the result of a training residency involving 15 artists from the Free Art School – ELÃ, the third edition of which was staged this year. The show addresses the issue of Ecologies of Good Living, a proposal that emerged from ELÃ meetings in 2022, in an attempt to think critically and politically about ecofriendly practices. The meetings raised awareness regarding the impact human beings have on the world, the historical structures that have brought us to this point and the practical steps that need to be taken towards achieving climate justice. Part of this process resulted in the exhibition Ecologies of Good Living, which features work produced by these training residents in a variety of media and styles.
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Un lento venir viniendo [A Slow Coming]
11/19/2022 — 02/26/2023
MAC Niterói, RJ
Since 2008, the Oxenford Collection has gathered together a select overview of Argentinean works of contemporary art, principally from the first two decades of the 21st century. The exhibition Un lento venir viniendo [A Slow Coming] features 57 pieces from this collection, covering a wide range of media that includes paintings, photographs, videos, visual and sound installations, performances, sculptures, collages and publications. Featured artists include Guillermo Kuitca, Julio Le Parc, Alejandra Seeber, Marcelo Pombo, Fernanda Laguna, Diego Bianchi, Claudia del Río, David Lamelas, Valentina Liernur, Juan Tessi, Karina Peisajovich, Eduardo Navarro, Silvia Gurfein and Alberto Goldenstein.
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Images from the Unconscious
03/22/2022 — 06/06/2022
Marres, House for Contemporary Culture,
Maastricht, Netherlands
In 1946, the Brazilian psychiatrist Nise da Silveira set up the Occupational Therapy Wing of the National Psychiatric Center, in Rio de Janeiro. At a time when psychiatric treatment methods such as electroconvulsive therapy, lobotomy and insulin coma shock were still commonplace, Da Silveira believed that patient could and should be helped by allowing them to express their pain, rather than being put into a stupor. Creative activities proved to be a powerful means both of calming schizophrenics and of accessing their inner worlds. The circular drawings they produced—some complex, others harmoniously structured—intrigued Da Silveira. She sent some samples to the famous psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. He saw in these mandala drawings confirmation of this theory of the universal language of symbols. Art critics were also impressed by their quality. Over the years, an unusual collection of around 400,000 artworks built up and this is now officially recognized as artistic heritage in Brazil. The Images from the Unconscious exhibition displays a selection of the works from this extraordinary collection. It presents the work of artists who have been working with Nise da Silveira for almost half a century, including neolithic sculptures, paintings of flowers in transformation, solar paintings made with wax crayons, in addition to the mandala drawings that made such a strong impression on Carl Gustav Jung.
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Occupation Nise da Silveira
07/10/2022 — 06/11/2023
Museu de Imagens do Inconsciente, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Occupation Nise da Silveira provides an in-depth look at the life of Nise da Silveira (1905-1999), one of Brazil’s most highly-acclaimed psychiatrists, whose work attempted to redraw the boundaries between the fields of medicine, philosophy, and art. Silveira proposed treatments that involve not only the spoken word—much undermined by irresponsible practices—but also living feeling, as embodied in core concepts of her work such as emotion-focused coping, catalyzing affect, animal-assisted therapy, and unrestricted respect for human being. This exhibition presents material from the personal archive of the doctor that deals with her family, her arrest, her relationship with the thinker and psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), therapy through expressive activities, diving into the images of the unconscious, the archeology of the psyche – and her unique way of doing science.
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Make yourself at home: displaced ideas on migration and hos(ti)pitality
03/30/2022 — 06/26/2022
Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, RJ
Hosted by Paço Imperial, the exhibition Make yourself at home: radical care and hospitality gathers together the work of 19 artists, Brazilian and international, all of whom explore the tensions within the guest-host relationship in a context of global displacement. The theme common to all of these artists is that of migration, understood as a form of movement, displacement, flux, occupation or voluntary or forced transfer of people, species and other bodies and animate or inanimate materials, revealing tensions within the concept of hospitality that may be interpreted formally or discursively. The concept of “hostipitality” is used to draw attention to the ambiguous nature of hospitality, which is apparent even from the form of the word. Faced with the foreigner, who is also “a stranger”, this concept contains a contradiction, which may take the form of hostility, or of a compensatory gesture. The exhibition draws attention to the tensions in guest-host relations seen in terms of historical and contemporary forms of migration, which in turn influence more wide-ranging xenophobic practices in relation to any “other”, not just migrants or refugees.
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Counter-Memory
04/19/2022 — 06/05/2022
Theatro Municipal de São Paulo, SP
Counter-memory aims to establish a dialogue between 38 works belonging to the modernist collection of São Paulo Cultural Center and around 90 contemporary works. The project creates a tension out of the silences and nuances present in the Modern Art Week of 1922 that is now regarded as a seminal event. The aim of the exhibition is to produce a re-reading and critical translation of the 1922 Art Week and its cultural and political context. The friction produced between these two exposes a fresh perspective on the silences and ambiguities of the Art Week, revealing a more diverse range of stories and individuals. Counter-memory also aims to disrupt the standard perception that prevails with regard to this event. Works by black, indigenous, trans, and women artists and artists from different generations are introduced to clash and create friction when compared to sculptures and paintings of European inspiration and refined architecture.
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Automatica has been developing cultural projects since 2005, working in the creation, production, curation, management, coordination and consultancy of exhibitions, educational programs, publications and other activities related to artistic production. It works with artists, curators, art critics, art historians, cultural institutions, public and private sponsors. It participates in public notices and awards, and prepares projects for incentive laws in the three spheres of public administration.
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