Associação Cultural Videobrasil

You make use of many media in your work (photography, painting, performance, video). How is the process of creation in relation to the choices of these media?

It is very important what each medium can provide for me to formulate the idea or concept that I want to express through my work. I believe that each one of them has its own characteristics which may be useful in the composition of a work. I have the freedom to make use of many media to try to formulate what I want to say, and the best medium is the one that will allow me to do so in a given case. Sometimes, the opposite happens; in this case the medium attracts my attention, so I explore its possibilities. I can produce significant results when I am playing with a camera. I think that any medium has much to be searched and explored by the artist, generating a process of discoveries.

Your body is used as a medium in many of your works, as in Desenho-corpo [Drawing-Body] (2002), Coluna [Column] (2003) and Madrugada [End of The Night] (2003). Is there a desire to transport the performance to new media and then expand its limits?

I think there is a kind of hybridism in my work; my strongest desire is to gather different types of media. It is not always possible, for one of the media often becomes more prominent than the others. In Verdejar, verde no branco no verde (To Green, Green on White on Green), for instance, I tried to produce a painting that would come out of the screen and invade the wall. Thus, the painting developed so that it became an installation. Even in Desenho-corpo, the drawing came out of the paper to invade another support: the body. Madrugada was elaborated as a performance that needed the photography to be accomplished. 

I became acquainted with your work in the exhibition Experiências do corpo (Body Experiences) at the Instituto Tomie Ohtake (2002). Three videos and the series of photographs Castelo de areia (Sandcastle) were part of the exhibition. What called my attention was the use of photography as a kind of unfolding of video in time. Does photography in your work have this sense of developing itself in time, extending the time and somehow trying to represent it still or split? 

Your observations on this work were pertinent and well put. The series of photographs Castelo de areia is related to the cinematic process and to the process of articulation of the video unfolding itself in time. They are moments that I try to perpetuate through photography. Between them, there are movements, subtle happenings that may be imagined by the viewer. I tried to express the idea of a slow time in which each grain of sand had a meaning, in which each little movement is important. Maybe we may think about the first films, the silent films that increased the value of the image. I tried to develop the idea of the permanent making and unmaking in relation to cinema and video. To make, destroy and make again. I think this is an idea that has much to do with art and the artist's work.

In the performance Rede [Hammock] (2003) there is the book Confessions by St. Augustine, open exactly to the reflection on Time. What is the relation between time and your work? Is there a more adequate media for you to express the temporal relations that are of interest to you? Time appears in a strong way in my work, almost always as a decelerated time in contrast to the stressing daily time. Our mass culture urges us to live quickly and to act without thinking. Paradoxically, it urges us not to waste our time, but it does not give us enough time to live well. St. Augustine talks about the existence of many simultaneous times and the ways to achieve each one of them. I think we should discuss the possibility of creating our own time. I think a lot about nature's time, the time of the rain that comes or of the winds that blow the clouds away. So I try to search for a special time that is not the daily time by creating videos, audios or performances that reduce or prolong time. That is why I am interested in the media that allow me to investigate time.

The City appears in many of your works, covered with concrete as in Horizonte [Horizon] (2002) or as the background to the unexpected appearance of an imaginary being in Madrugada. How does the city influence your work? How do you deal with the city?

I am always living the tension between culture and nature. I am attracted to the city as a constructed landscape, its dynamism that moves history forward, and as the place of the dominion of human beings over nature. I try to establish a way to understand and to face the contradictions of the city through art. In Horizonte, I cover the urban constructions with cement, reinforcing and nullifying the urban landscape. Madrugada was a way I found to invade the city at night, creating a strange character within a urban scenery that eliminated the possibility of the surprising. It is impossible not to be touched by what happens in the big postindustrial metropolises.

Recently, you won a scholarship from FAAP and lived in Paris between August 2003 and February 2004. How has Paris influenced your work?

In Paris, I became acquainted with a city that has another rhythm, another dimension. It is an easygoing city; it allows the artist to move freely to produce and search for art. There, nature is more integrated into the urban landscape, but it is also more controlled by men. These characteristics encouraged me to realize interventions in the city like Um Mundo (A World), a work that required many night walks, and in the morning some places where marked with many celestial spheres. Realizing this civilized nature, I decided to set up the installation Vereda [Swampy Vegetation], trying to produce a connection or a contrast between the European and the Brazilian landscapes.

In Sorriso [Smile] (2001) you display yourself in the shower with a big commercial smile stuck on your face, an image that also appears repeatedly in Fachada brasileira [Brazilian Façade] (2002). The big smiles were taken from the mass media; is it criticism or pure irony? 

I believe irony is a form of criticism. The use of humour can help to make people reflect. I have been realizing that this is another characteristic of my work: to communicate with humour and to criticize with suavity. Sorriso and Fachada Brasileira are works that indicate the importance of appearance in Brazilian society. The smiles are stereotypes of happiness reproduced by the upper class in advertisements and magazines. In these works, I tried to express the artificiality of the smile and to criticize the motto of happiness as a consumer good. In Fachada brasileira I created a choreography of superficialities, an intricate map of the alliances and connections between businessmen, socialites, TV stars and politicians.