Tuesday 18 June 2013

MD week 5: "O Seu Olhar" the transformation process


"O Seu Olhar Pode Transformar As Nossas Vidas" (Your Look Can Transform Our Lives)

So, I've already posted an overview of our mural project, but here is a closer look at the whole process of transforming the abandoned forgotten space below into community mural about solidarity and unity, looking through the eyes of the Pink House girls towards a more peaceful future for Medina.


Starting within context of working with the NGO Meninadança Rachel and I created the images below to explore giving voice to our wonderful girls of the Pink House, who are either at risk of or victims of poverty, violence, drug abuse, child prostitution and abandonment.  These girls are all too often ignored or blamed for their situation or even forgotten completely by the community and authorities in Medina.  So this photo project was us experimenting with phrases to state "Open your eyes, I exist. Listen to me, speak for me. Open your heart."

Open your eyes / Speak for me

The conversation these images stimulated with director Rita developed into the plan for a collaborative mural between myself and the girls of the Pink House, and then developed into an even bigger idea of a performance of theatre, dance and poetry planned for Saturday 8th June.  Rita wanted to focus on the power of love to transform something forgotten into something new and full of life, using the transformation of the abandoned wall into a piece of art as a symbol of the transformation that the NGO aims to achieve in the girls within the loving family community of the Pink House.  And so our theme was set: "O seu olhar pose transformar as nossas visas" (Your look can transform our lives) and the process was set in motion.

Step 1: The design. This mural project came just two weeks after the shooting of one of the Pink House girls brothers, which had triggered a bout of intense violence between rival gangs in Medina.  Councilers and community members had been meeting to discuss what steps could be taken to reduce the violence and improve the unity between boroughs.  Taking this into account it seemed important to use the mural as a space to emphasise both the unity of a peacful community and our girls hopes and dreams for a peaceful future for Medina.   


So reference that I used included the Medina map, the Brazilian "pombo" (dove) and hands.  The idea to use hands was inspired by one of our Pink House girls who had used the phrase "e se o toque das seus maos pudesse transformar o futuro" (if the touch of your hands could transform the future) in her journal cover design and animation in our human rights animation project.  


To represent unity in the design the huge hands in the centre are formed of puzzle pieces made up of people of all colours from all the different neighbourhoods coming together and offering one another a helping hand to enter the puzzle, the community.


The use of the puzzle symbol for community is a recurring theme in my personal art work (as I'm sure some of you have noticed by now! ;-) ) and so I've admired this mural (below right) by artist Blu for a long time:

Inspiration from other artists used as reference for our mural.  Unkown (left) and Blu (right)

Step 2: meeting local artist Guina, assessing the quality of the wall and planning materials. Gunia specialises in murals and has work all over the town and all over Sao Paolo, where he worked for years before returning here to his hometown of Medina.  For a fixed fee Guina provided all the equipment and paint for the entire mural and most importantly his time and collaboration. Under his watchful eye I learned how to use his amazing spray gun techniques, and was massively impressed by his accurate free-hand scaling up of the Meninadnaça logo right at the last minute on our final day.


Step 3: Wall preparation: the local council gets on board. In an amazingly short space of time Rita managed to gain the support of the local council, the 'prefeitura' who were amazing.  Without even wanting to see the design they granted us permission to use the space and then, despite the two holiday days in that particular week there was a team of local workers on site preparing the wall.  They got rid of broken glass in the empty windows and staples that peppered the entire wall which they then sanded and painted with a white base.  They also cemented the floor for our girls to dance on safely.  It amazed me the trust that both Rita and the prefeitura had in my work.  Apparently the mayor said he trusted Rita's opinion and wanted the final image to be a surprise.  At that stage I felt impressed and honoured by this faith in me as an artist, but also a lot of responsibility to gift the community an image that would truly live up to their expectations. 

"Qualidade" (Quality) - the quality of the wall before and after the loucal council´s collaboration.

Step 4: Making a start - scaling up the design.  Collaborating with Guina we got the beginnings of the design scaled up and chalked onto the wall.  The background tapes were painted the colours of the Medina flag and in the bottom right hand corner of the image join together into one plait, representing the strength of collaboration.


Scaling up the design

We were luck to have the brilliant photography skills of Rachel Alvarez documenting the whole process... here she manages to make me look funky and captures me overcoming my fear of being high up ladders (a fear I wasn't so aware of until I was higher up one than I felt comfortable with!!)

Gunia and assistant Denis mixing paints.  We used at different times water based or oil based paints, and a combination of paintbrushes and Guina's brilliant spray gun which has extra coverage and is more paint-efficient than brushes.

Step 5: Painting starts and the community gets involved.  Rachel and I were really excited that a young lad we'd met in the street when we first came across the space took up our invitation to get involved as we moved into the painting stage. For us this was the point where the mural became more than just a symbol representing community solidarity, but through its making a living experience of it.  This youngster turned up daily and became a good friend.  He had told us he liked drawing and got really absorbed in each stage of the process.  As we heard him singing away to himself one day as he worked we smiled to think he was so happy and relaxed in the work. He also really enjoyed using the iPhone to photograph, film and record voice on the nights of the rehearsals and performances, which was great as this meant he provided us with a lot of documentation footage.

Local lad helping out.

Some of our girls helping early on. 

Denis and local kid getting involved, the son of the brilliant local sculptor Geruelson who stopped by a few times to chat.

Guina and Joel working away preparing blank eyes for our girls.

Step 6: Our girls paint in their eyes A hugely important part of the process was the collaboration of our girls from the Pink House.  They came in small groups throughout the day on the Thursday and were invited to choose an eye each and to fill the iris with their own design, placing their own personalised mark into the image.  This day was my favourite of the whole process.  All the stresses of time pressure and material restrictions dissolved as I felt the girls excitement, enthusiasm and pride in their work - their presence in the space that day totally energised me... to use the phrase of one ONE project   participant Diego, the girls 'refilled my soul'!  So thanks to each and every one of them! :-)



Recurring themes in the girls eyes were hearts, the Brazilian flag, stars and symbols of peace.

Some of the girls painted eyelashes in, and Lauren, Joel and added lashes to others and left some without, creating a very varied eye-scape that represents the girls look - their look towards the future that they want to see in Medina. 

Reference for the use of eyes in street art: (left) Women are Heroes, JR, Rio de Janeiro (right) eyes from a doorway I spotted in Valparaiso, Chile.

Rachel in action as both painter and photographer! :-)

Friendships forged: with each day in Medina and each day at the wall our friendships in the community got stronger and stronger as folk helped out and shared their time, conversation, food and drink with us.

Amazing friends Nani (left) and Wellington (far right).  Wellington is a capoeria champion and was teaching us some moves, so came along to the mural one afternoon to get us doing some steps for a special treat-moment for the time-lapse (right).

Dona Zade, gorgeous kind friend of Maria with her brother, one of the local councilers who helped us sort the wall out.  Both of them give amazing strong warm hugs generously!  Dona Zade was one of the neighbours to invite me into her home for 'cafezinho', or just a "little coffee" that it turns out is always a huge spread here in Brazil! 

Step 7: Finishing touches - the steps and logo.  As the end of the week and the Saturday performance quickly approached there were moments when it felt we would run out of time.  But happily, it all came good in the end.


Inspired by these steps I spotted in Valparaiso with Emma and James (left), and the Brazilian Profeta Gentileza's writings (right) we asked the girls to include in their flower eyes words they wanted to see included on our steps at the wall space. 


Before and after.
The words the girls chose for their steps: 
GOD, LOVE, PEACE, RESPECT, UNION, DIGNITY, EQUALITY, JUSTICE, LIFE, HOPE.

The characters representing people from all of Medina's neighbourhood help one another up the stairs and along the wall to enter the hands.

Step 8: The rehearsal.  With the mural almost finished on Friday 7th Lauren brought the girls along to the space for a dress rehearsal of their two dances with the wrist-ribbon accessories she's been busying away preparing for them.  Excitement was brewing!!


Step 9: The performance!!! 

Preparing: Dona Zade kindly allowed us to use her front room to do the face-painting for the girls.  We used the stitched-togethher lips and blanked-out-eyes designs from the "Abra Seus Olhos" photo project.

Opening: Rita, Matt and the Mayor gave opening speeches talking about the community and the girls and the need for transofrmation and peace.  A large white sheet that had hidden the mural was pulled down to reveal it for the crowd and I said some words about the symbolism of the design. 

The theatre and poetry performances from the girls were amazing!! For the poem a number of girls were 'hidden' in the audience and one by one stood up to recite their lines, inviting the audience to reflect on the invisibly of the girls issues, issues that can be affecting the person next to us but that go unseen or unnoticed.
Here are the words of their poem:

We need you to look with new eyes,
because we do not want a strange look.
Not with looks of evil, but with a look of love and happiness.
Your look can change my life, If you just see me differently.
And if you want to look at me with affection,
It’s just you that can make it happen.
To love is to be loved,
Have respect and to be respected.
I want love, I want peace, and you could be my peace.
We live in a big world, Where we all look differently.
Changes in my life: a smile, with a hug, with love and happiness.
Not just me but like all others,
We want respect from such people who are superior to us,
who can look fondly and how we really are.
In this world no one is better than anyone, We are all equal.
Your look can change my life.
I would like to be respected,  just as I respect them.
I need affection, sincerity, harmony. That’s what I want you to give me.
Do not look at me in a bad way, If not I will look at you the same way.
Yes I will.
It’s so easy to be my friend. I tell you this:
Hey! You! Listen!
No matter if the world looks at me with a different look!
The important thing is that I make a difference in the world …



The girls dancing: a hugely proud moment performing Beyonce's I Was Here, choreographed by brilliant volunteer dance teacher Lauren Batty. Two of the girls had asked to introduce the song, (whose lyrics are in English but Lauren had translated for them) because they wanted to explain the meaning of leaving your mark, as they were doing here in the wall. Beautiful!



What an amazing and beautiful night.  I was so proud of the girls and so excited to see them enjoy their night after all the hard work. Watching their happiness in the photo montage video Rachel made about Menindança moved me to tears.  (Hopefully I'll have copies to link here soon.)  Wacthing the gilrls perform and seeing their pride and enjoyment in their work throughout the projects and on the night of this performance I really believe that Rita and her team at the Meninadança Pink House are already affecting the transformation in the girls life that this whole project was about: the girls, like the doves in our painting, are already starting to stretch their wings and take flight.



 What an absolute honour to have had the opportunity to be involved in this project and work alongside these amazingly resilient, creative and loving girls.  A huge enormous thanks to every single one of them. 


Muito obrigada meninas. 
E obrigada a todo a comunidade por sue apoio e amizade!
Abraços fortes a todos.
:-)

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