Carla Zaccagnini

[Buenos Aires, 1972. Lives and works in São Paulo]

The Museu das Vistas [Museum of Views] project began in 2004 and, since then, has been repeated various times in cities in different countries: Medellín (Colombia), Rincón (Puerto Rico), São Paulo (Brazil), Valparaíso (Chile), and others. As in other artworks by Carla Zaccagnini, here she creates some rules of the game, which should be followed by the viewers/participants for the artwork to be fully realized. In this case, the artist employs a forensic sketch artist, who remains available during a previously agreed period in some areas of the city where the exhibition featuring the artwork is held. Here, instead of translating into drawing the spoken description of criminal suspects, these portraitists produce drawings of landscapes recollected by those who wish to participate in the project. Each one of these drawings is made on self-copying paper; the original graphite drawing is given to the person who describes the scene, while Museu das Vistas collects the blue copies on yellow paper produced chemically by the pressure of the pencil.

The resulting collection is a testimony to the forms in which the landscape becomes a mental image and how this image of memory can be transformed into a discourse and be translated into drawing, constructing a new physical image. Thus, the traditional genre of landscape painting, so relevant and predominant in the production of the artists who are participating in the Bienal Naïfs do Brasil, is unfolded in Museu das Vistas, in time and in space. In a certain way, Zaccagnini’s project attests to the persistence of the landscape in the current world. At least since the 15th century we have learned to see the world as a landscape, and it is precisely this process of mental construction and visual translation that the artist emphasizes in Museu das Vistas. The resulting drawings are also fundamental elements of the project, and since their final form will be determined by the skills and choices made by the portraitist, as well as the narrators, they are unforeseeable. But based on the drawings produced up to now we can say that, for the most part, they bear some stylistic affinity with naive art. Are not forensic artists artists from outside the traditional world of the fine arts?