Statement 2019
Transcription of the statement for the 21st Biennial
In 2016 I published the coloring book Livro de Colorir – Retrospectiva 2015, which featured 48 images based on photos published in the two largest Brazilian newspapers and made into drawings by the artist Estela Miazzi. Far from being an “anti-stress therapy,” coloring here provoked a critical confrontation with reality. In 2018 I shaded some of the drawings, which related to Brazilian facts, with black crayon. For the 21st Biennial, I updated the work by adding photos published between 2016 and 2019, which were made into drawings by the artist Manuela d’Albertas.
The small number of new images, conditioned by the space available, raises many questions: how to elect just 12 facts from the last few years among so many changes? How not to take sides in an increasingly polarized political scenario? How to relive all those events in such a short time with the detachment required to organize a selection? I confess it was a difficult—and certainly flawed—process.
The way we consume news, the logic of information, the sheer speed of it all often cloud our outlook. I believe art can help build resistance by making us rethink our perception of the world. By looking back at and coloring those images, often forgotten due to the speed with which we are daily exposed to the news, we end up reliving and reflecting on those events, on how they are addressed by the mainstream media and ourselves.
I have always desired, with my work, to provoke a pause for reflection. The huge political, ideological, ethical, economic and environmental crisis we have experienced in recent years has made me leave aside the world of literature, which has a strong presence in my body of work in its more poetic and intimate character, and redirect my attention to narratives that constitute what we call “reality.”
By reintroducing those images, perhaps already forgotten, and proposing their reinterpretation by extending the time we devote to them, Livro de Colorir attempts to shed light not only on the facts and how we deal with them, but also on the behavior of the press in Brazil and the extent to which it contributes, in homeopathic doses, to the creation of a psychosphere.