Lidia Lisbôa | São Paulo Museum of Modern Art

 

From April 20 to September 17, 2023, the 37th edition of Panorama de Arte Brasileira: Under the Ashes, Ember will be exhibited at Sesc Sorocaba. Co-hosted by MAM São Paulo and Sesc São Paulo, the tour takes works by 26 artists to the interior of the state, with installations, paintings, sculptures and videos that lead to discussions on the legacy and symbols of colonization, the scenario of continuous destruction, the memory in the face of events of national relevance, and the possibilities of imagining individual and collective narratives in Brazilian contemporary art.

 

The 37th Panorama of Brazilian Art at MAM São Paulo took place on an emblematic date, the bicentenary of what is conventionally called the Independence of Brazil and the centenary of the 1922 Modern Art Week. , left legacies and a series of issues that reverberate in Brazilian society until today. From contemporary artistic production, it would be possible to decant Brazil's links with its colonial heritage, taking into account the historical, political and aesthetic dimensions of the Independence of Brazil and modernism.

 

Several artists who have been producing since the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century problematize in their works, from contemporary perspectives and their own origins and references, discussions that permeate Brazilian history from the colonial period to the present. These works pulsate like embers under the ashes of a devastated land, which began to be destroyed with Portuguese colonization, with the extermination and exploitation of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of women and men uprooted from Africa.

 

Among the intentions of Panorama 2022 is to contribute to the deconstruction of certain views and naturalized paradigms, as well as the colonial legacy of Brazil. Averse to the modern notion of progress, the curatorship of this edition emphasizes the ruins and barbarities of a country that was not even able to fulfill the basic promises of an economically modern and integrated society. 

 

Based on a curatorial web with works by artists from different generations, regions and ethnic-racial and gender identities, the 37th Panorama values ​​the pedagogical dimension of art, built in partnership with MAM's Educativo. The form is not opposed to social and political life, art itself has a formative role and can prospect ruptures and stimulate debates and reflections in different audiences.

 

The experience with art can restore our ability to project the future, to imagine utopias, since we are in the midst of a catastrophe trying to put out fires – and setting fire to colonial symbols. For some archaic societies, the future is precisely in the past, in the relationship with the ancestors, that is, far from the modern avant-garde vision of being ahead of time itself. While the embers burn under the ashes, several artists retell stories, propose dialogues based on their own experiences, their origins, repertoires, earth, clay, rubber, drawing, everyday objects, ink and canvas, video, narratives, stories, art, maps, flags, monuments and bodies.

 

The ember that hides under the ashes, under the scorched earth, under the ruins of this project for a country, still burns. Just as colonial logic and retrograde thinking still persist, there is also resistance and action. This means that if the ember is still consuming what remains, what was not burned, it also pulsates as a transforming force. And the ashes, as you know, can be used as fertilizer for art and for everything that will still flourish in this land.