Felipe Cidade is a brilliant Brazilian artist whose has just recently come back to São Paulo from an artist residency in Manaus in the Amazon. Happily I shared his company one of my first afternoons in the city last week, and ended the gallery wanders with a few games of the Brazilian version of pool (in some odd stroke of traveller luck I won 2-1! Thanks Felipe, when's the rematch?!)
In these days after the most intense of the demonstrations there was a heavy police presence on the streets, although on this particular say it could also have been to do with the football - this was I think a day of a semi-final of the Confederations Cup (left). /
(Right) A style of graffiti writing that is common in Brazil, and especially so here in São Paulo where Felipe drew my attention to it. The almost icon-like lettering scales the sides of buldings that are storeys and storyes high. Felipe tells me the most common way of grafiteros marking so high is free-style scalingo f the buildings from the outside. Phew, even the thought of that makes my stomach giddy even with my feet on the ground!
Plates from an exhibition of works by political cartoonist Glauco, seen at the Casa da Cultura, in the old Banco do Brasil building in São Paulo. Glauco's critiques of Brazilian politician's greed and corruption are particularly relevant given the recent demonstrations: "I hate it when you bring money to wash at home" (left)
As an interesting aside, I heard a report of small-scale Brazilian corruption on the bus back from Iguaçu, from thefriendly and chatty Paulista, Emmerson, who I sat next to. He himself openly admitted that he was dodging tax and copyright laws, in that his reason for being on the bus was to bring back more than his permitted allowance of toys from the duty-free shops in Paraguay to sell in his shop (in fact at the start of the journey, he had been visibly nervous, worrying about random police checks which at that point near the border would mean confiscation of the goods. Later on in the trip the bus was stopped and another passenger was summoned by the police. As the bloke got back on the bus and we saw the police leaving without having confiscated merchandise, Emmerson explained at this pointfurther from the border all the poilce wanted were bribes. He told me that as well as his toy shop he sold illicit DVD's once a week at a local market, where he also had to pay police a monthly bribe to turn a blind eye. Acknowlegding that the way he makes his living is wrong in that it breaks the law, it is his opinion that the police are worse in that by asking for bribes they are corrupting their role.
Projection installation Espera by Gisela Motta and Leandro Lima, 2013. The shadows in this installation took me by surprise when they first walked across Felipe and my shadows as we moved around the gallery space. Since seeing this exhibition the sensation and impression this installation left on me has triggered a lot of thinking about the presentation of a particular project idea that I will come back to later. Seen at the Vermelho gallery, where Felipe's brother Marcelo Cidade has been represented for over 10 years, and where Felipe has been invited to present a performance piece in September this year.
Another artist and gallery space where Felipe was resident last year, Casa Juisi Phosphorus. These plants (left) make up a welcomingly rusty and overgrown outside nook of the old building, a kitchenette and space for fresh-air that Felipe and the other residents of his group installed. / This golden-cavern (right)was in the basement of the building, reached by an uncomfortably steep-and-narrow spiral staircase, who I was enticed down by an abstarct soundtrack which turned out to playing out from this tv screen, which was playing out its video of random golden objects, surrounded by golden sheets and sprayed golden boards and triktes, laid out simply as if being worked on, in the empty space whose walls were painted entirely black. Something about this scene really absorbed me. I think perhaps something to do with the feeling of having happened upon a secret, something about the immersion in the space, in the bubble of a fantasy world. I was reminded of the immersive installations of Mike Nelson, which are more expansive, for sure, but leave me with the same delicious taste of entereing an other-world. This was a reminder of my own interest in displying works in a way that invites the audience to enter to participate, to play.
Felipe, muito obrigada por tudo a companhia, foi fantástico ver você de novo, e ouvir suas historias recentes. Sorte com tudo, e desejando-lhe muito sucesso em todos os seus próximos projetos e aventuras. Até a próxima vez, e até a próxima jogo de bilhar!
Abraços,
:-)
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