Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Between 1964 and 1980, the photographer and entrepreneur Thomas Farkas produced, in a partnership with different Brazilian filmmakers, a set of more than thirty documentaries that were later known as Caravana Farkas. These works show both an intention to reveal inconspicuous aspects of the present and the desire to record and document cultural practices that were threatened by the changes in the modes of living of traditional communities in the country’s interior. On April 29, a selection of these works will be presented to the public by the curators Solange O. Farkas and Gabriel Bogossian, followed by a debate with the visitors.

Gabriel Bogossian

Editor, manager and curator, Gabriel Bogossian is assistant curator at Galpão VB. He curated the exhibitions Resistir, reexistir (Galpão VB, São Paulo, 2017); Território, Povoação (Blau Projects, São Paulo, 2016) with Juliana Gontijo; and Cruzeiro do Sul (Paço das Artes, São Paulo, 2015), among others. He has collaborated as an editor and translator with the publishing houses Rocco, Hedra, and the University Press of the Federal University of Pernambuco.

Solange O. Farkas

Curator and director of Associação Cultural Videobrasil. In 1983, she created the Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil, of which she is chief curator, and which has grown into a landmark for art production from the Global South. She was responsible for bringing exhibits such as Sophie Calle’s (Take Care of Yourself, 2009), Joseph Beuys’ (We Are the Revolution, 2010) and Isaac Julien’s (Geopoetics, 2012), which she also curated, to Brazil. With Gabriel Bogossian, she was co- curator of Akram Zaatari’s exhibition (Tomorrow Everything Will be Alright, 2016). She was featured as a guest curator in the 10th Sharjah Biennial (United Arab Emirates, 2011), the 16th Cerveira Art Biennial (Portugal, 2011), the 5th Videozone: International Video Art Biennial (Israel, 2010), and the 6th Jakarta International Video Festival (Indonesia, 2013), among other events.

Highlights of her 25-year curating career include exhibits such as Contemporary Southern Hemisphere Videoart, at the 9th Ayoul Festival (Beirut, Lebanon, 1999); the Pan-African Contemporary Art Exhibition (Salvador, Brazil, 2005); La Mirada Discreta: Marcel Odenbach & Robert Cahen (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2006); Suspensão e Fluidez (ARCO, Madri, 2007); and the Contemporary African Art Exhibition (São Paulo, Brazil, 2000), co-curated with Clive Kellner.

In 2015, Solange O. Farkas was invited to join the content committee of the UN Live Museum, the Museum for Humanity of the United Nations.

The only work especially created for Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno, the site-specific Emboaçava (lugar de passagem), by Rodrigo Bueno, evokes the rich past of the Vila Leopoldina area, where Galpão VB is located. In this activation, Bueno and the curator Gabriel Bogossian will conduct a guided tour starting with a course through the exhibition, exploring the relationships between the works, and then to a walking tour around key places in the district’s history, returning to Galpão for the visit’s closure.

Rodrigo Bueno

Working with installations and objects using materials such as iron, wood, and other organic elements, Bueno reflects on the urban memory through residues of the city. His practice includes workshops and collaborative activities, and he is also the coordinator of Ateliê Mata Adentro. He has held the solo shows A Ferro e Fogo, at Galeria Marília Razuk, in São Paulo (2016); and the solo project at ArtBo, in Bogota (2016); he has also taken part in the collective exhibitions Transparência e Reflexo, at Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo (2016), Cruzeiro do Sul, at Paço das Artes, São Paulo (2015), among others. He lives and works in São Paulo.

Holder of a doctorate degree from Goldsmith College and a collaborator of Forensics Architecture, the architect and researcher Paulo Tavares has been developing over the past years an investigation that brings archeology, urbanism, and anthropology closer together to reflect on the possible connections between cultural heritage and rights of traditional peoples and communities. Tavares will chronicle his recent experiences with original peoples and traditional communities in Ecuador and Brazil, in a talk with the public moderated by the curator Gabriel Bogossian.

Paulo Tavares

Architect and urbanist. His projects, texts and lectures have been published and shown in different contexts, more recently at the Istanbul Design Biennial (2016) and the Sharjah Biennial (2017). His currently works as a professor at the School of Architecture and Urbanism of the University of Brasília, and previously taught at the Centre for Research Architecture – Goldsmiths at the Cornell University, and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador. In 2017, Tavares created the agency Autonoma, a platform dedicated to exploring new forms of thinking and producing the territory.

From the outset of her career, Claudia Andujar took an interest in themes and groups that were marginal to the dominant culture—from patients of a psychiatric hospital to homosexual men living in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro—, documenting the vital potency of the photographed characters. Her activity as a photojournalist first took her to the Carajás and, in 1971, to the Yanomami people, with whom she developed a long-lasting relationship of work, activism, and affection. At the closing event of the exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno, Andujar talks with the public and the curator Gabriel Bogossian about her relationship with the Yanomamis, as well as her career as a photojournalist and other lesser-known sides of her work.

Claudia Andujar

Internationally acclaimed, the photographer’s work is found in collections of the most prestigious museums worldwide, such as New York’s MoMA; Paris’ Maison Européene de la Photographie; and Instituto Inhotim in Brumadinho, Brazil. Andujar has published the volumes Marcados (2009), A vulnerabilidade do ser (2005), and Yanomami (1998), among others. The artist lives and works in São Paulo.