Panmela Castro

/in ,

Rio de Janeiro, 1981

Pamela Castro’s work achieves visibility in the struggle against sexism, patriarchism and the binary normatization of bodies, and in the exploration of fairy tales and their “rose-tinted” world. An active member of feminist networks that use urban art as their tool of protest, such as NAMI, Castro has painted walls in Rio de Janeiro, Cochabamba, Oslo, Miami, Israel, New York, Berlin and Paris. Her compositions feature catchwords and feminine figures, with faces spattered and sometimes even washed in light, creating strong tonalities across a spectrum of reds.

For Frestas, Panmela graffitied the Scarpa mansion, the historical building that now houses the Sorocaba Culture Department, and presented a performance in collaboration with the writer Clara Averbuck. The two women entered the exhibition space dressed in a velvet Siamese gown and proceeded to a closed doll’s house, where they opened the doors and windows to allow the public to peer inside at the interiors, decorated entirely in pink. After the performance, Averbuck wrote her story on one of the walls and invited observers to occupy her space in the dress, saying: “Come on in and tell me a story”.

[U.C.]

Obras

Femme Maison [Dona de casa], 2017
instalação
COLABORAÇÃO Elizabeth da Silva e Artha Baptista
PARTICIPAÇÃO Clara Averbuck
#femmemaison #frestas2017

Edson Barrus

/in ,

Carnaubeira da Penha, 1962. Lives and works in Recife

In 1999 Edson Barrus started work on a research project to create a new breed of dog. With a background in zootechny, the artist combined his observations on different species with his studies on art and art theory and criticism to draft the framework for his Base central cão mulato [Mulatto Dog Project]. Mongrels appear in many paradigmatic works of Brazilian literature, such as Vidas Secas [Dry Lives] by Graciliano Ramos and Cão sem plumas [Featherless Dog] by João Cabral de Melo Neto, in which there is a clear attempt to turn the mutt into a symbol of the country’s miscegenation. The artist’s main interests are the hybridization of creatures and culture, their convergence, formation, practices and poetics.

For this edition of Frestas, Barrus was invited to join the residencies program in order to plant an Imburana seedling (Commiphora leptophloeos) at the Sorocaba Botanical Gardens. Imburana wood is widely used by artisans in Pernambuco, who sculpt their famous saint statues from it. Currently endangered, the species’ preservation has become an important investment for the Ibimirim Saint-sculptors Association, responsible for planting a hundred thousand Imburana trees. The artist joined the cause and organized a crowdfunding project to buy some land for Imburana reforestation, running against the grain of the town’s recent real-estate boom. As with Base…, the project is effectively a work of socio-environmental sculpture in the sense of something that rallies people behind a real intervention.

In addition to inviting the Triennial’s visitors to peruse the Botanical Gardens, Barrus’ participation also includes a documental exhibition on his experiences with management and agriculture in Sorocaba and Ibimirim, Pernambuco. The installation includes videos and archeological fragments from the ranch in Ibimirim.

[U.C.]


Obras

Projeto imburana, 2017
técnica mista
PARTICIPAÇÃO de Yann Beauvais, diretor
do filme Derrubada não!

Daniel Escobar

/in , ,

Santo Ângelo, 1982. Lives in Porto Alegre

Through an archeology of the present and varied appropriation strategies, Daniel Escobar transmutes ephemeral images of consumption and desire, especially those generated by real estate and tourist advertising, into raw material for art. In Especulação imobiliária [Real estate Speculation] (2014), the artist fills acrylic showcases with Kiddies building blocks wrapped in real estate fliers and ads. In Anuncie aqui [Advertise Here] (2014), Escobar set up an empty billboard at the exhibition venue and offered it for rent as advertising space.

The artist is also interested in the advertising strategies adopted by the art world and its exhibition mechanisms. The installations Conjugado [Conjugated] and Coleção particular [Private Collection], both from 2016, are cases in point. In the first, the artist fills the exhibition space with a domestic environment planned by an interior designer, who was free to choose the room type, furniture, and lighting, as well as an artwork by Escobar to complete the decor. In the second installation, Escobar appropriated pages from decoration magazines that had works of art among the items of decor. The intervention consisted in framing the pages, using acrylic passe-partout to cover up everything else in the images besides the artworks.

Throughout the Triennial, Escobar will present a new version of the series A arte da conversação [The Art of Conversation] (2012), for which he was authorized by the owners of five local commercial establishments to remove a letter apiece from their signage. The borrowed letters were then used to write up the word “sonho” [dream] on the Sesc Sorocaba façade. United in the formation of a new meaning, each letter retains the typographic characteristics and materials of the sign it was lifted from, which has to get along without it in the meantime. The empty space may detract from the effect, but it won’t render the signs illegible. The more attentive passer-by may realize what Escobar is up to: grafting the promise of advertising onto an art institution.

[F.J.]

Obras

A arte da conversação, 2012/2017
tipografia em metal dos estabelecimentos ESAMC Sorocaba, Chamonix
Plaza Hotel, Pet Shop Canino’s, Mecalight, Sex Shop Paradise
FOTOGRAFIAS André Pinto

Cleverson Salvaro

/in , ,

Analysis of the exhibition context tends to be Cleverson Salvaro’s first step in creating his works, which say a lot about the local geographical, economic, social and cultural conjuncture. For Frestas, Salvaro presents a new sculpture that is half wall, half portal, built on a vacant plot midway between the towns of Sorocaba and Votorantim. Most evidently, the piece raises issues of territory and borders, but there is a more specific meaning to its location. For years, these towns were locked in a legal dispute over which had the right to collect taxes from the Esplanada Mall, which sits on the border between the two.

The sculpture also references another imbroglio involving Sorocaba: this one concerning a 20 m-tall structure known locally as The Vergueira Spider. Originally erected in the 1960s as part of an unbuilt church, this abandoned concrete formwork resembles an arachnid. Salvaro planned his sculpture in layers, so that it could be left unfinished as soon as the funding had run out. The work itself was designed to be aborted, so its incompleteness is an intentional part of its conception, inspired by this concrete monument to a bankrupt development.

[L.B.]

O Nome do Boi

/in , ,

A network of artists from all over Brazil, O Nome do Boi was formed in 2016 in response to the political crisis in the country. The group’s resistance is predicated upon a range of artistic and political strategies designed to bear public witness to this historical moment through counter-narratives that—produced by multiple authors—denounce the figures and motivations behind the projects of power now vying for control. The group takes its name from a popular Brazilian expression “Dar nome aos bois” [Name the bulls], which means to identify the real culprits involved in a situation.

For the Triennial, O Nome do Boi worked in a range of spaces and with a number of agents in Sorocaba, promoting gatherings, debates, workshops and joint actions at the Sesc unit and at other venues throughout the town. Among the activities proposed are graphic workshops at the event’s Educational Space, a temporary radio station, and a series of street demonstrations accompanied by a sound bike and material produced in a collective atelier.

[Y. R.]

Maria Thereza Alves

/in , ,

São Paulo, 1961. Lives in Berlin

Through a series of collaborations, Um vazio pleno [A Full Void] (2017) discusses the whitewashing of the indigenous presence from the history of the construction of Sorocaba. Tracing relations between the past and the present, the project throws light on the colonial practices still in use in the present day, and articulates visibilities and narratives of resistance.

For the Triennial, the artist collaborated with the Guarani ceramicist Maximino Rodrigues to produce replicas of funereal urns, water jars and pottery shards on display at the Sorocaba History Museum. The material was distributed strategically throughout the town centre in a bid to reinsert the indigenous presence in the local public space and symbolic repertoire.

In dialogue with the family of the Guarani leader Joaquim Augusto Martim, founder of the Yyty Village on Jaraguá Peak, in São Paulo, the artist invited the Guarani educators Eunice Martim and Poty Poran to hold a conference on the social reality of the state’s Guarani indians. The event got underway at São Bento Square in downtown Sorocaba, more precisely at the foot of the monument to Baltasar Fernandes, the Bandeirante explorer who founded the town, and proceeded to Dr. Arthur Fajardo Square, home to the monument to Rafael Tobias Aguiar, the founder of the Military Police.

At the Triennial, Alves exhibits a set of videos recorded by indigenous students at the Sorocaba campus of the São Carlos Federal University. Recorded on cellphones during an indigenous contemporary art workshop delivered by the artist, the videos feature interviews with non-indigenous students answering questions put to them by their indigenous peers.

[Y.R.]

Obras

Um vazio pleno, 2017
técnica mista
FABRICAÇÃO DE CERÂMICA Maximino Rodrigues, Michely Aquino Vargas, Aldeia Jaguapirú
WORKSHOP DE CERÂMICA Giselda Pires de Lima Jera, Aldeia Tekoa Kalipety
PALESTRA Poty Poran Turiba Carlos, Aldeia Tekoa Tenode Porã e Eunice Augusto Martim, Aldeia Tekoa Yyty
FOTOGRAFIAS Michely Aquino Vargas
ASSISTENTE DE PROJETO Wilma Lukatsch
POSTER Valeria Hasse
EDIÇÃO DE VÍDEOS Bruno Lotelli
AGRADECIMENTO Universidade Federal de São Carlos – Campus Sorocaba (UFSCar); Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Sorocaba (MACS); Associação Bethel; Capela Senhor do Bonfim João de Camargo

Fabiano Marques

/in , ,

Santos, 1970. Lives in Berlin

Between 1976 and 1978, during the final years of Institutional Act no 5 (AI-5), known as the most draconian instrument of repression during Brazil’s military dictatorship, Fabiano Marques was living in Sorocaba. At the time, his father was a judge and his mother, a geometry teacher. His memory of the town and his desire to reflect on the role the Judiciary is playing in the current political situation, seen in the light of a critical reading of past events, converged in the chance to work with a group of local law students interested in studying the court rulings issued during those years of his childhood.

In Os processos [The Cases] (2017), Marques worked with students and teachers from Paulista University (UNIP) in Sorocaba to select and summarize rulings for the town’s municipal court records. The aim was to annex the material to the official archives so it could be made available for public consultation. In the late 70s, court records contained only the information needed to locate cases in the archives. Since then, despite changes in the regulations, these documents have not been updated.

Libra (2017) consists of a metal sculpture which, seen against a backdrop of sky, points straight to the constellation that bears its name. In it, the stars become points connected by lines scaled to represent their individual distances from the Earth. Seen from a certain perspective, the sculpture takes on a long, conical form reminiscent of a telescope, underscoring the fact that vision is always partial and conditioned by a particular viewpoint.

[Y.R.]

Obras

Libra, 2017
ferro
CONSULTORIA DE ASTRONOMIA Martha Terenzzo e Axel Jaccobs
AUTOCAD Gabriela Lessa

Os processos, 2017
WORKSHOP COORDENAÇÃO JURÍDICA Elisa Rosa
PARTICIPANTES alunos do curso de Direito da Faculdade Unip de Sorocaba

Nunca

/in ,

São Paulo, 1983

Since the mid-2000s, Francisco Rodrigues da Silva, better known as Nunca, has been executing large-scale drawings and paintings on the urban space. Part of a celebrated generation of graffiti artists, including Os Gêmeos, Spetto and Ninca Pandolfo, Nunca started working in São Paulo before taking his art to other major cities worldwide. His presence on the institutional scene and contemporary art market has helped strengthen the debate, reception and public appreciation of urban art.

His striking figurative interventions evoke aspects of Brazil’s past and a graphic repertoire in which the regional collides with a current cosmopolitan imaginary. Traditional populations, people of mixed race and a diversity of customs and traditions are blended with references to pop and mass culture, everyday life, racial and class conflicts, competing interests and clashing territories.

The artist’s emphasis on diversity extends to his use of form. A visual polyphony of vibrant colors fills fields juxtaposed with black-rimmed and hatched drawings that lend scale and volume to the theme in hand. Based on a preliminary sketch, the works tend to be adapted in loco, where they reach their final form. For Frestas, Sorocaba provided the inspiration for a new work. Inaugurated at the Triennial, the conditions and permanence of the enormous mural in Colonel Fernando Prestes Square are submitted to the dynamic of the city, both during and after the exhibition.

[D.M]

Obras

Fundadores, 2017
acrílica e spray
AGRADECIMENTO Edifício Francisco Paula Simone
e Sorocred

André Komatsu

/in , ,

São Paulo, 1978

Part of a generation of São Paulo-based artists who, since the turn of the millennium, have been investigating modes of thinking the public sphere, André Komatsu conceives of works with strong material and constructive appeal that decode, in time and through action, the stock notions of space that have become second-nature to us. The artist also deploys a vast and heterogeneous conceptual and formal vocabulary that tensions the power relations and negotiations inherent to cohabitation in urban environments.

From early on in his career, Oeste ou até onde o sol pode alcançar [West, or as Far as the Sun Can Reach] (2006) is a performance recorded on video. Komatsu follows the sun on a Herculean crow’s flight voyage across São Paulo, from its easternmost rim to its farthest western perimeter. Armed with a compass, the artist made his way across the sprawling metropolis, attempting to surmount obstacles as they arose. This instrument for reading technoscientific data helps him engage with his environment, drawing an analogy between the real world and the geographical reference data we rarely ever question.

At the Triennial, Komatsu also presents a previously unseen project intended for a wasteland near the highway in Sorocaba. The artist built a structure in iron tubing, glass and mirror capable of generating a range of conflicting spatial sensations, both in virtue of the form and the materials used. The work conjugates containment and openness, landscape and impediment, view and opacity, public and private.