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The design sector grew 30% in this edition of SP-ARTE and curator Carollina Lauriano debuts the Showcase program, which promotes the intersection of social and environmental issues
The most important art fair in Latin America reaches its 19th edition occupying the traditional Pavilion of the Biennial, designed by Oscar Niemeyer in Ibirapuera Park. This year, SP-Arte definitely resumes its face-to-face programming with the participation of more than 150 galleries, design studios, publishers, independent projects and institutions.
The curator Carollina Lauriano was invited by the organization of SP-Arte to launch the Showcase program, the fair’s new curatorial initiative. Under the title “Recovering paradises: not needing the end to arrive”, the curatorship is diluted in several booths at the fair and ties works by artists with different origins, concerns and approaches. Names like Claudia Andujar, Jaime Lauriano, Rosana Paulino, Panmela Castro, Rubem Valetim and Emanoel Araújo make up the line drawn by Lauriano. One of the curatorial mottos is to question “the separation between anti-racist social movements and environmental and ecological discussions – a false antagonism bequeathed by colonial modernity”according to the release of the new program .
As SP-Arte is one of the most visible and circulating moments in the annual calendar of the arts circuit, the event also proves to be a propitious space for discussions that are important to all agents in this field. One of the most commented moments since the opening of the fair that year was the intervention by the artist Negro MIA on the external wall of a stand. Beside the inscription NEGRO – his brand -, the artist asked “Where is the black art?”. Even though the art produced by black people has grown in visibility and commercialization in the international market, the consumer public and market agents are still massively white. MIA’s questioning demonstrates that the market’s steps towards its racialized agents are still slow and there is still much to be done so that the idea of equity is close to a reality.
The tapestry between art and design
One of the outstanding points this year is the 30% growth of the design sector, which now brings together 44 exhibitors on the ground floor of the pavilion. There are several aspects within this sector that include furniture, tapestries, sculptures, among other types of objects.
Tapestry and its various production methods are even more present in the design sector. This language has been rescued in the circuit through a new generation of artists, craftsmen and designers who use traditional techniques such as the loom, for example. In addition, tapestry has been gaining new fans with the emergence of techniques such as tufting, a gun that allows for a freer and more organic process.
Between traditions and innovations, the tapestry also represents the thin line that distances or approaches the object of art and the object of design. With clear or undefined uses, this language is present in different contexts and raises more questions regarding what separates these two universes present at SP-Arte and other fairs around the world.
In the current scenario of national contemporary tapestry, Alex Rocca is one of the artists that has been gaining greater visibility. In this edition of SP-Arte, Rocca presents a stand with the collection Manto, recent production that unites the material of silk and wool in a poetic that rescues its ancestry. In an interview held during the fair, the artist shared his vision of our country’s relationship with tapestry and other textile modalities:
“Brazil is very strong in textiles. Everyone has a reference to the grandmother, the aunt in textiles – and even if we speak on a different scale, we can remember Burle Marx with giant tapestries in public buildings. So textiles have always been very accessible in the sense of being common to the eye”.
Thinking regarding the new weaving technologies, Rocca sees a relationship between new textile artists and tradition, especially the Brazilian modernists who are a great reference in his process: “What happens today is a rescue of an affective memory with other techniques, with other processes, and other people doing it”.
For the artist, the barriers between art and design can and should be broken, recognizing the possible aesthetic relationships from different objects. In her day-to-day life, Rocca meets different demands that reflect this fine line:
“There are architects who look for me because my work matches a type of furniture, others look for me because they want my work as an art object. So the origin is the same, but the destination is different”.
Galeria Passado Composto Século XX presents a stand curated by its founder Graça Bueno. Tapestries are the commercial focus of the gallery, which in this edition of SP-Arte presents works by Jean Gillon, Genaro de Carvalho and Norberto Nicola – artists who have become a reference of language in the country.
For Graça Bueno, there is a specificity factor that makes textile production processes unique, and may explain a little the success of these techniques today:
“It’s been a big international trend for some time now, so we celebrate this moment of synchronicity, of tapestry being seen as a unique work of art and that has this artisanal factor. Many of these works today are created and made by artists, but they can also be conceived in ateliers like Jean Gillon, who created the drawing and painted it, and the embroiderers executed it – as did Genaro”.
Tapestry is experiencing a moment of reaffirmation of the tradition of techniques that date back to a long relationship with the language of Brazil, while new themes and tools pave a vivid and renewed path. It is possible to walk through the spaces of the fair with an eye open to the different possibilities of crossing, whether in design, contemporary art, or discovering the meeting points between them.
Diogo Barros is a curator, art educator and critic, graduated in Art History, Criticism and Curatorship at PUC SP.
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