Daniel Steegmann Mangrané

[Barcelona, 1977. Lives and works in Rio de Janeiro]

In the indigenous tupi language, the word Ka’aeté means “deep forest”, far from the inhabited territories. It is a mythic place where gods and spirits live, where the paths end; it is the impenetrable. Kiti means “to cut with a sharp instrument, by human hands or by technical means”. As in the hegelian interpretation, for the indigenous tribes of Brazil, the Ka’aeté, the deep forest, is also a place without history, where the things are still unformed and animals can metamorphose.

Kiti Ka’aeté is the overall title of a project by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané that originated from a collage in which the artist based his work on the abstract art of the tupis, with its complex geometric system, to realize precise cuts on an image of the Amazonian forest. In a subsequent unfolding of the same work, which is the version featured in this show, the collage was installed within an exhibition panel and backlit using only a slide projector. In this way, the beams of white light pass through the small cuts and their luminosity emanates from the face of the image, conferring the quality of a spirit or soul to the abstract forest. Part of the installation consists of the space between the projector and the panel where the collage is located. Open and accessible, it can be passed through by the exhibition visitors, who intermittently interrupt the beam of light from the projector, causing a flickering effect that can be observed by those in front of the image.

Kiti Ka’aeté brings to Além da Vanguarda the dimension of indigenous art, manifested through its rereading within the contemporary register. Here, the constructive appearance of the collage — which in the context of contemporary art produced in Brazil normally evokes or makes reference to the practices of concrete and neoconcrete art — points to other possibilities of experimentation with geometry and, not less importantly, to the meaning of its approximation with life.