Tonico Lemos Auad

[Belém do Pará, 1968. Lives and works in London]

In his works, Tonico Lemos Auad begins with mundane materials to construct objects, sculptures and installations that generally depend on a delicate balance to exist. Within common and insignificant contexts the artist carries out silent displacements that potentize the latent symbolic value of shapes and elements that normally go by unperceived, making them precious and permanent. These operations invariably involve a specific handicraft skill that is characteristic of certain regions or cultures and associated to traditional materials and techniques passed from one generation to the next down through the centuries. In their obsolescence in relation to the society of mass production, many of these techniques are currently nearly extinct, thus also turning Auad’s work into an extensive research and negotiation with each artisan involved.

For Além da Vanguarda, the artist produced a set of five objects that are part of his Sleep Walkers series, presented for the first time at MuHKA, in Antwerp, Belgium, in 2009–10. These objects are carefully produced using laces from different origins, which the artist acquires already made, but which are then transformed into three-dimensional elements in the form of fruits or vegetables. Throughout this painstaking process, which requires extreme precision and ability, a Portuguese lace, for example, with its coarser weave is cut and mended together, thread by thread, with an elegant piece of English lace, or Brazilian lace, in such a way that the transition from the one to the other is nearly imperceptible. Upon careful observation, however, there are perceptible nuances in the passage from one weave to the next, revealing the small but significant differences that evidence not only the passage of a given know-how through the different cultures, but also the adaptations that this technique undergoes in each country over the years. These fruits and vegetables made of lace are hung like light fixtures from the ceiling and lit up from the inside, allowing us to observe all of the details on their surfaces. Characterized by the imprecision of manual production, however, they present an organic aspect, seeming to sprout from the ceiling like exotic plants that result from the uncommon crossing between tropical and European seeds.