In 2013, Cia. de Dança Palácio das Artes occupied Inhotim performing Se eu pudesse entrar na sua vida [If I could get into your life]. The experience was so successful that in 2014 Inhotim renewed the partnership with the company, this time to create a performance directly related to the Institutes collections. This is how Gestos Ordinários / Coleção CDPA [Ordinary Gestures] came to pass, the first choreography commissioned by Inhotim, which will be presented August 15, 16 and 17, at 2:30 p.m. in the parks gardens.
An essential point of the creative work for the intervention was to think whether it would be possible to build a choreography based on the movements people make in their everyday lives, such as sitting, kissing or hugging. An action, such as raising your arms, done in different ways is not the same action”, reflects choreographer Dani Lima, director of the project, carried out in partnership with Cia. de Dança Palácio das Artes. The result of the groups investigations was an inventory of gestures that dialog with ideas present in all museums, such as collectionism, cataloguing and memory, and can be taken to other spaces other than Inhotim.
Feel like watching Gestos Ordinários | ColeçãoCDPA? Then purchase your ticket to Inhotim here. The show is free for visitors and is part of Inhotim em Cena 2014 program, presented by Pirelli, sponsored by Correios with the support of Saritur.
As I write this testimonial, I´m still very moved by the flood of emotions we´ve experienced in the past few days. These days were filled with many first times for most of the eight teenagers taking part in Laboratório Inhotim. Their first trip outside the state of Minas Gerais, first plane trip, first ride on the subway, first time in a foreign country. That is:a lot happening in a very short time.
One of the purposes of the trip to New York is to learn about festivals that occupy the city and involve the community, since, in the end of the year, Laboratório will produce a festival in Brumadinho, where Inhotim is located, and where these teenagers come from. That is why the partnership with the New Museum was so important. Every year, they promote a street festival. In this years 8th edition of this festival, we were invited to take part as volunteers in organizing the event.
The day we arrived, we went to the museum to meet the education team and the youngsters participating in a summer program, who would also work in the festival. They showed us the proposals for workshops that would be offered to the public. We created our own uniforms from T-shirts, visited part of the museum as well as the plaza where the event would take place.
Our group and the volunteers who made the Block Party a success. Photo: Shannon Phipps
In the following day, the place was transformed. Eight tents with tables, a stage and several helpful and cheerful volunteers were there!Each one of the teenagers from Laboratório stayed in one tent, together with a teenager from the New Museum and other volunteers. Each tent represented one of the workshops offered.The first challenge they faced was the language barrier. That, which at first was uncomfortable and awkward, slowly disappeared during the exchange of experiences that took place during the day.A smile, a look, a gesture, a song, or even they discovery of a mutual passion for Demi Lovato young North-American actress and singer were ways they used to connect with one another, shortening distances and differences. And, certainly, their familiarity with to technology also helped.All of a sudden, they all pulled out their smartphones with simultaneous translation to mediate communication. In the end, being a teenager in Brumadinho or in New York is not all that different!
Michele, one of the youngsters of the New Museum’s summer program, using the cell to minimize language barriers. Photo: Alice Dias
Click here to learn more about our trip. Laboratório Inhotim relies on a sponsorship by Banco Itaú.
Since June 27, Rio de Janeiro has witnessed the greatest international exhibit the city has ever seen. Organized by curators Rodrigo Moura, director of art and cultural programs at Inhotim, and Adriano Pedrosa, the artevida exhibit [literally, art&life] aims to tell the history of art based on references not found in major cultural centers. The exhibit features about 300 works of art by 110 artists from South America, Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Some of them, such as Brazilian artists Lygia Pape, Hélio Oiticica and Cildo Meireles, can also be seen at Inhotim.
The name of the exhibit was not chosen by chance. For the neoconcretist movement that first appeared in Rio de Janeiro in the 1950s, art should establish dialogs and tensions related to aspects of life and of the world. This attitude was essential to form Brazilian contemporary art. On display at Casa França-Brasil, Parque Estadual Library and Parque Lage, the exhibit also expands to MAM Rio (Museum of Modern Art), starting this coming Saturday, July 19, with the opening of its second segment. Inhotims Blog talked to artevida curators, who told us a little bit more about the project. Read more below!
Inhotims Blog The exhibit gathers countries in the Southern Hemisphere to offer another look towards the history of art. How did this idea come about?
Adriano Pedrosa and Rodrigo Moura The research regarding the artists has been happening throughout the past several years. Many of the foreign and Brazilian artists are professionals we have worked with before. The sets and subsets of works were chosen based on knowledge and reflection on these works, but, above all, considering Brazilian perspectives. Thus, the section artevida (body), at Casa França-Brasil, has clusters of Brazilian and foreign works based on Bicho, Linha orgânica (both by Lygia Clark), on Tecelar (by Lygia Clark), on Parangolé (by Hélio Oiticica), generating close relationships that revisit the orthodox geometric abstraction, suggesting an organic and body-conscious form of thinking about the object and emphasizing the body as an activator of the artistic experience. On the other hand, in the section artevida (politics), thematic clusters are related to dictatorship regimes, war, violence, elections, censorship, demonstrations, work, feminism, racism, and seek this parallel between contexts which apparently are not connected, but that bear some kind of relationship with the Brazilian people.
IB How do the works chosen relate to hegemonic narratives in contemporary art?
AP and RM The exhibit looks towards the Brazilian production as a matrix and filter, so as to consider broader, more global relationships between different artistic contexts. We have prioritized this dialog with production hubs which are somehow closer to us, either because they share with us a colonial and post-colonial history, or recent history of authoritarian regimes, or, simply, because they are far from hegemonic production centers. There is a desire to untie an affiliation model that always goes through the center so that production can be legitimized. This doesn’t mean we deny our relationship with Eastern Europe and the United States at all.Actually, there are some artists from these regions present in the exhibit. What we propose are new dialogs, which have not yet taken place. If, in the first part, which we opened at Casa França-Brasil last month, this dialog happens by way of the body, whether through geometry or self-portraits, in the section that opens next Saturday at MAM Rio, this dialog happens through politics. This doesnt mean an evolution in time, but rather a difference, a modulation of the curatorial framework.
IB Some of the names featured in the exhibit are present in Inhotims collection, such as Hélio Oiticica, Geta Bratescu and Hitoshi Nomura. How does the Institutes collection dialog with this proposal to see art history from another angle?
RM It seems to me, this dialog happens in a very important way. As we mention in artevidas curatorial statement, this is not an exhibit of a thesis, but of many hypotheses. This polyphonic representation is something I learned working in the formation of the collection, when this happens all the time. The artists youve mentioned have a very important place at Inhotim, precisely because they found such fertile soil when it comes to dialogs with Brazilian artists, they are central to building a narrative of what Inhotim represents as art: Lygia Pape, Cildo Meireles and Hélio Oiticica, for instance, are represented with such important works in our collection. At Inhotim, weve recently delved into areas we just knew superficially before, such as Western Europe and Japan, which have not yet been completely revealed, but that start to appear in exhibits at the Institute. This is the case of the individual exhibit by Romanian artist Geta Bratescu, at Galeria Lago as of September, and Do Objeto ao Mundo – Coleção Inhotim, at Palácio das Artes in December and at Itáu Cultural next year. In these exhibits, we are going to show quite a lot of Japanese material that have great resonance with the art produced in Brazil in the same period.
Interested? Then plan to visit artevida!The exhibit will be open until September 21, 2014.
Rodrigo Moura (left) and Adriano Pedrosa (right) at Parque Lage, where part of the exhibition takes place. Photo: Leo Aversa
The Institutes oldest educational project, Inhotim Lab, is packed and ready to visit one of the most vibrant cities in the world. As part of the activities in the program, nine students will be travelling to New York this coming Thursday, July 17, to take part in an observation and learning experience which includes visits to museums, cultural spaces, event venues and artist studios. Inhotim is a space that proposes international dialogs through its collections. We have works of art and botanical species from several parts of the world. At Inhotim Lab, we also seek this kind of exchange. Visiting new places and getting to know new people broaden horizons and help us understand our own place in the world, leading to empowerment”, says Maria Eugênia Salcedo, transversal education manager for Inhotim.
One of the high points of the groups agenda is a street party organized by the New Museum, exclusively dedicated to contemporary art. The program for the event, entitled New Museum Block Party, includes free performances and workshops intended for children and adults and inspired by the exhibits on display at the institution. Youngsters taking part in the museums educational projects are in charge of part of the program for the Block Party. The idea is that this experience allows Inhotim Lab participants to lead the organization of a festival in Brumadinho in November, proposing a new relationship with the spaces in the city.
Fourteen-year-old Millene Raissa Paraguai is a student at the Maria Solano Menezes Diniz Municipal School, in the district of Tejuco. She is looking forward to boarding on a plane for the first time. This is an experience I will remember forever. I am very happy to take part in Inhotim Lab. When I visit the park now, I have a different look towards art and also towards life itself, reveals the teenager. With regard to the party, she says she wants to pay attention to every little detail and see what ideas can be used in their event in November. Each place has its own reality, whatever works there might not work here, she says.
Inhotim Lab is an art-oriented educational program aimed at 12 to 16-year-old students in the public school network in Brumadinho. By conducting research and experimentations, participants develop a critical and reflexive eye not only towards the art world, but also in relation to the context in which they live, becoming active agents in their communities. About 200 youngsters have taken part in Inhotim Lab since the program started back in 2007. Besides New York, the project has taken the students to London and Buenos Aires.
Are you curious to learn more about this journey? During the trip, Inhotims Blog will post testimonials and reports of participants and educators who are going to New York. Make sure you check it out!
If you wish to help the Institute carry out projects such as this one, click here and become a Friend of Inhotim.
