Logo NAÏF 2012 no tema 1

Beyond the Avant-Garde

Kiki Mazzucchelli

Curator

Introduction

Since the beginning of the 2000s, the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil has presented the so-called “Special Rooms”, which hold smaller thematic exhibitions featuring artworks selected by a curator appointed by SESC, in parallel with the works selected by the jury of the main exhibition. Although they always seek a dialogue with the naive production, around which the event is structured, the exhibitions in the “Special Rooms” have traditionally taken place in isolation from the main set, literally in a separate room. This physical separation between the two shows served to demarcate their different territories, ensuring that the reading of the curatorial proposal was not confused with the set selected by the jury, thus maintaining their cohesion and integrity. This was generally an important point, since many of the previous curatorships have included artworks that possess a strong aesthetic affinity with the works of naive artists, which could suggest eventual relations between the works and meanings other than those desired by the curators.

In 2012, as the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil is celebrating its 11th edition and 20th anniversary of existence, SESC’s proposal is to seek a greater approximation between the naive productions and contemporary art. Based on this proposal of approximation, the first action of the curatorship was to abolish the physical separation between the works of the main exhibition and the “Special Room”. This gesture was aimed at breaking the artificial rigidity of the categories that surround these two artistic genres, with the assumption that once they shared the same setting this would allow the public to experience the artworks more freely, in a way that is less prescribed by curatorial selections that favor the traditional method of assigning artworks into determined categories. It should be emphasized that the aim was to furthermore eliminate possible hierarchical distinctions between the show selected by the jury and that of the “Special Room”. By doing away with the physical existence of the latter, the aim was to also dispel any associations relative to a supposed greater symbolic value of the works that are part of the invited curatorship. These works, commercialized in the contemporary art market, invariably possess a greater market value and take part in the glamorous circuit of the major art fairs and international art biennials. Here, however, they obsequiously infiltrate into a territory that traditionally belongs to naive art, discreetly emphasizing or punctuating certain aspects in common with the two productions or producing meanings that emerge only in their relationship with naive art.

The naive, or everything that is outside

But it is curious to note, moreover, how the problem of the differentiated perception of the value of these two productions is also reflected in the terminology employed to denote them. The question concerning the inappropriateness of the use of the term “naive” in reference to a production by artists who reject or lack formal art training has been approached various times in past editions of the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil, and is also the subject of the text published in this catalog by Edna Matosinho Pontes, a member of the jury of the 2012 Bienal. In that text, she calls attention to the negative value built into some of the current terminologies, such as “primitive”, or even “naive”, and comments that the current tendency is to use the term “popular art” as a more appropriate category to encompass the creative diversity of the practices such as those which are the object of this biennial. For her part, Marta Mestre, who also served on the jury of this edition, proposes an expanded questioning of this same problem, situating it within a worldwide and historic panorama. She then goes on to problematize the role of the curatorship in the dissemination of what she designates as “spontaneous art”, calling attention to certain theoretical and interpretive paradoxes that wind up reinforcing its subaltern character in relation to modern and contemporary art. Therefore, in light of the scope of those two texts and the depth with which they deal with the problem of terminology associated to the production by artists who lack or reject formal art training, I will not devote any more space to this question in this brief introductory text.

I should, however, for purposes related to the curatorial proposal of Além da Vanguarda>, underscore that here I am suggesting an expanded understanding of that which, as suggested by Matosinho Pontes, would be more appropriately designated as “popular art”. Without a specific or more thoroughgoing knowledge concerning the profound diversity of practices covered by this term, I have opted for a more or less loose definition which, from my point of view, would include the artistic practices that: (1) are unfolded generally outside the large urban centers; (2) are developed apart from academic knowledge of Western art and the 20th century European vanguards; (3) possess some sort of deep connection with the immediate needs of a determined community, whether of a religious, mythic, commercial, decorative, practical etc. order, thus possessing a more collective character. Here would be included, for example, indigenous art, the popular handicraft of the Brazilian Northeast, the regional folklorists, Afro-Brazilian art, and others. It should also be noted that I do not propose this as a category absolutely distinct from what we call contemporary art. In fact, works of art commonly extrapolate a category or do not fit into any specific genre, and the countless examples of this include, among many others, the participation of Hélio Melo in the 27th Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Lisette Lagnado, the appropriation of elements of the “civilization of the Northeast” in Lina Bo Bardi’s architecture, or the production of the inmates of the Engenho de Dentro mental hospital. In the case of Além da Vanguarda the aim is to create a situation that favors the destabilization of these categories. The idea is that, on one hand, the physical proximity between “popular” and contemporary artists will allow a series of productive clashings in the exhibition space based on the aesthetic contents of the artworks on display, while, on the other, it will also provoke a questioning on the limits imposed on the different artistic productions, the discourses that produce them, the circuits in which they transit, and the value they are attributed.

The Bienal Naïfs do Brasil and Além da Vanguarda

It is evident that the greatest interest and focus of attention of this event as a whole, in regard to its tradition, scope and public, falls on the naive production, disseminated at this biennial which has been consolidated over the last decade as one of the most important national platforms in this field. Therefore, even though the curatorship of the artworks brought together under the title Além da Vanguarda sought to emphasize the so-called contemporary production, it did not intend to take the central position occupied here by the naive art, but rather to discretely infiltrate within the main show of the works selected by the jury. Nevertheless, even with the awareness of its secondary position, it is also an ambitious undertaking, since the very possibility of the exhibition Além da Vanguarda is conditioned on its relation with the naive artworks.

In this sense, it does not appropriate just one or another artwork of the principal segment; rather, it incorporates all of the artworks that are part of the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil. It thus becomes a sort of large parasite that creates, simultaneously with the Bienal, another exhibition with an entirely different purpose. That is, both the exhibitions take place there, during the same period and in the same physical space, although the premises on which each of them is based makes them entirely different projects. The show of artworks selected by the jury exists in its own right, independently from the curatorship of Além da Vanguarda, while the latter depends entirely on the set of relations that it establishes with the former in order to exist. Detached from the former, it dissipates and collapses. This evidently involves an experimental proposal which by its own nature and due to the scheduling of the Bienal cannot be definitively settled beforehand, since the selection of the works featured in the curated segment was made in parallel with the selection of the jury, in which, unfortunately, I could not participate. We therefore worked with an element of surprise, and left open some decisions relative to the positioning of the works within the exhibition space until the setup phase.

The artworks selected by the jury at this edition of the Bienal comprise 70 artworks by 55 artists, most of them bidimensional works. In their respective texts in this catalog, jury members Juliana Braga and Paulo Klein — who served as the show's curator in 2004 — discuss some questions and challenges confronted during the selection process in 2012. According to their reports, the jury sought to gather works that are an expression of the living and pulsing popular production, avoiding those that aim to reproduce an established style. The selection of the curatorship, in turn, includes 21 artworks by 10 artists, two of the works commissioned specifically for this exhibition while a third takes place outside the exhibition space of SESC Piracicaba. In choosing the artworks, the aim was to find works able to create situations that foster dialogues and relations between the naive and contemporary segments, mainly involving the relation of these works with a production or with the popular vernacular, understood in the wide sense as all of the artistic production that takes place outside the scope of the tradition of the European vanguards.

As a matter of fact, all of the contemporary works selected here bear some sort of specific relationship with some of these manifestations, whether in the way in which they appropriate recurrent images and thematics in the naive paintings (bells and religion, in the case of Pablo Lobato), in the rereading of a traditional genre of naive painting (landscape, in the case of Carla Zaccagnini and Thiago Rocha Pitta) or in the appropriation of popular techniques (embroidery, in Alexandre da Cunha, lace, in Tonico Lemos Auad, the pennants of popular festivals, in Rodrigo Matheus). For his part, Montez Magno will be represented with works from three different series, produced from the 1970s to the 1990s, in which he deals with the geometric legacy of popular art. This is a small but valuable sampling of work by this artist of historical importance whose experimental and innovating production has been under development since the late 1950s. Besides this, for the first time in the history of the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil, we have the presence of three foreign artists, whose participation will contribute toward expanding the debate concerning the relation between contemporary and popular art beyond the regionalisms and nationalisms. One of them, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, a Catalan residing in Rio de Janeiro, has focused his work on the Brazilian indigenous culture and its production of geometric patterns. Costa Rican artist Federico Herrero works primarily with painting, exploring the Latin American tradition of mural painting in a way that popularizes contemporary art. We are very happy to have secured his participation in the show, where he will realize a painting in the SESC building, in a place (or places) to be determined during the setup. It was equally gratifying to have the participation of Colombian artist Felipe Arturo, who for some years now has been developing a work of temporary architectures in which he incorporates construction techniques of street vendors from different cities. Arturo will carry out a short artistic residency in the city of São Paulo, where he will research the local street vendors with the aim of developing a project on the adjacent veranda to the exhibition space on the first floor of SESC’s building.

Seeking a more precise translation of the curatorial ideas in the exhibition space, the design of the setup was developed in close dialogue with architect Ana Paula Pontes, in charge of the exhibition architecture. We opted for an architecture that would not reinforce the “popular” character of the naive artworks with emphasis on materials or colors that would evoke this universe, thus allowing the works themselves to express their content without the need for external reinforcement. At the same time, we did not follow the aesthetics of the “white cube” traditionally used for contemporary shows, but rather sought to incorporate the characteristics of the building itself, which was not constructed specifically to host art exhibitions, thus presenting a series of visual interferences. For this edition of the Bienal, the architect developed a system of display panels made with boards of unfinished, unpainted plywood, held up by metal supports. Besides preserving the transparence of the exhibition space, avoiding the construction of false walls and proposing a lighter occupation of the building, the panels make use of a material which simultaneously evokes a certain rusticity (the unfinished wooden board, in the size in which it comes from the factory) and an industrial character (since it is an industrialized material). We therefore arrived at an architectural design that is strictly aligned to the curatorial proposal. The graphic design was developed by Carla Caffé with the SESC team and has likewise sought to reflect the concerns of this curatorship.

Finally, I would like to express my immense thanks for the support and enthusiasm of the team at SESC Piracicaba during the process of conceiving and carrying out this project. Thanks to the performance of all of them and to effective teamwork, we were able to ensure the inestimable participation of the artists and members of the invited jury and to carry out each step of the process with due care and attention. Juliana Braga and Daniel Hanai were especially attentive to the demands of the curatorship since the outset, understanding the ambition of this project and contributing greatly with clever solutions for the problems of a practical and conceptual nature that arose in our path.