Made in Mirrors

Visit report & impression statement Recife 2007

A one week pressure cooker meeting was meant to give the Dutch partners of Made in Mirrors project a impression of (artistic) Recife and also, to evaluate the first project year as well as to elaborate proposals and plans for 2008. Cristiana Tejo, director of MaMaM, organized a diverse visitors program including several art foundations; studio visits and talks with curators who reside in Recife.

About MaMaM:
The introduction visit to the museum brought out several interesting remarks. First of all, MaMaM seemed to be as hidden as Vitamin Creative Space and also in a way Het Domein are because we enter the building through the back entrance. From the front, the direct neighbour of the museum is a workers agency and several old, empty colonial houses with wall drawings.
The museum building used to be the CIR, the Club International Recife as the former logo on the tiles suggests, a ballroom with several cultural meanings. In the entrance hall, the tiles were designed especially for the museum and the floor is covered with traditional tile patterns that remind on the tile industry of the South of Holland, but also on the color patterns of the characters of Os Gemeos. Tiles, azulejos, are part of the important ceramic tradition of Recife. They are found as floor- or wall coverage inside and outside buildings, but also during our visit to Fransisco Brennand and his amazing working spot.
The exhibition of Mamam is entitled with Fluxus and shows impressing collection of the private archive of artist – collector Paulo Bruscky whose whole atelier-stash was transferred to Sao Paulo Biennale 2004. One of the statements in the show seems to fit quit well for our project: `My gallery is your mailbox`. The presentation in MaMaM was fortunately in a much more structured form as we discovered later in a studio visit, well done and of an international standard concerning content as well as presentation. One of his pictures announced: `Que e a arte? Que e serve?´. With Paulo Brusky, we also had dinner a day later, in a charming Japanees-Brazilian food place while watching the Recife soccer club was loosing 2-0.
The collection of MaMaM is stashed on the upper floor. It’s easily accessible for research, except the two permanent pieces of ?? that are, at this moment, hidden behind a wall in order to make the presentation space more neutral.

Space, and mainly the lack of it, is an important topic of MaMaM (as it is for Het Domein). Refurbishment was meant to be done in 2007, but didn’t happened because of administrational problems, and also improvement of accessibility, for example an elevator or the English course for employees, was not been realized.
The art education of MaMaM is in the hands of Tereza Neuma and plays a major role in the museum activities. In fact, children and youngsters as the future audience of MaMaM have first to be created and trained in their interest of art. An exchange of expertise on that field between Het Domein and also Vitamin Creative Space would be of great relevance. Between Het Domein and MaMaM a direct collaboration can easily be established because of common educational structures. Concerning a joint venture with China, an approach at a curatorial expertise level would be very interesting.
The second building of MaMaM, MaMaM no Patio, is a recently renovated house on a lively historic square in the hart of the city and shared facilities with the design center. Here, the artist in residence program of MaMaM is realized in terms of exhibitions and projects. Young Brazilian artist Laura Belem opened her show at Saturday November 31, funny enough themed around the Dutch history of Recife. The opening took 3 hours and gave a good impression about MaMaM’s public and the local art scene. We saw some people back from the press conference and also artists we visited and were able to tighten up contacts.
Regarding the artist in residence, Cristiana Tejo informed us that she and her staff are still busy with finding a suitable house, as prices are high and space lacked. The MiM-residency is planned together with the accommodation of MaMaM no Patio, where the artists stay in a hotel in the last year. This plan is very welcome considering the experiences of last year and also the ones made in Capacete in Rio (see below).

General impressions:
Graffiti, wall drawings and murals are spread out all over the city. It’s amazing! The quality is really high and on various walls, for example at schools or hospitals, you find legal graffiti that is set out with great care. Another form of painting on the walls are painted advertisements that announce divers products or assistance as well as colorful painted shop fronts. Rik Meijers China advertisement project immediately comes into mind. This count not only for day light, but also for nighttime: the neon and light advertisements are spread out all over the city (even if they are less present than in Guangzhou). On many places they are the only source of light since there is almost no streetlight.
The all-over colorfulness of daily live, including the clothes of the people and the Brazilian logo, is another fact that impress. Rainy, gray, misty Holland you forget in one day and do not miss at all.

Concerning urbanization, the parallel existence of traditional and Modern Street live, architecture, people, techniques, music and mentality attracts attention. Old and new goes together hand in hand, in front of the high tech equipment shop there are the one person stands for traditional handicraft, the horse car is catched up by the newest car of Brazilian brand. This parallel existence of times immediately calls up the memory: on a street level, Recife reminds us very much of Guangzhou in China, even if the people look different and the written texts are readable. But that doesn’t matter too much in finding your way through the city, because the Brazilian advantage of readability is completely whipped out by the absence of road signs or sign posting on the streets.

During the visit to the Museum Of Recife located in an old Dutch fort, Cesar Barros informed us very detailed about the city restructuring and town-planning for the upcoming years. The focus on social and cultural aspects protruded in his story, for example the case of the favela community Brasília Teimosa or the establishment of six cultural centers throughout the city in the next ten years (photo: Barbara Wagner).

Made in Mirrors is all about identity in the light of cultural diversity. The Brazilian context highlights two issues in this context, namely first the present Dutch colonial past and secondly the artistic movement of Antropofagia.

The first issue raises questions about globalization in a historic perspective as for example pointed out in Carlos Asfora’s essay over the Dutch that controlled the slave supply from Africa to Brazil as the working forces on the sugar cane plantations as well as the area of sale in Europe. The visit to the Ricardo Brennand Institution with its prestigious collection of colonial artifacts and ‘relics’ including etches of Frans Post and historical views of Recife completed this picture, also thanks to the explanation of Joanna D’Arc.

As second issue, "Antropofagia" was a very important artistic movement in Brazilian culture that arose in the 1920's , following the Brazilian modernist movement. The word consists of the Greek anthropos, “human” and phagein “to eat”. It originally meant the act of eating another human being, a practice of some Brazilian indians, who made it in order to "catch the enemy's power and courage", being this enemy another tribe's indian or the colonist. Such was also a metaphor - if we follow the idea of the creator of the movement, Brazilian writer Oswald de Andrade - for the sense of catching foreign information, in this case, from the European avant-gardes, and, by "digesting" it and mixing with the local circumstances, transform the results into something original.

That also meant acknowledging the Brazilian indian and black heritages, in an avantgardistic reinterpretation. Antropophagy was of vital importance for the definition of contemporary Brazilian culture, as one can see by its rediscovery in the 1960's by the movement of concrete poetry and by the musicians from Tropicalism, who in their turn digested the universe of mass communication culture, pop culture and cinema. (www.discordia.us/scoop/special/eadobbs/indexa15f.html?eaid=97).
During Documenta XI the Swiss – Brasilian artists Riedweg and Dias referred and ironized the antropofagia in their piece Funk Staden, using colonial images of Hans Staden – here with an etch from 1557 – who made a major contribution to the the Western concept of ‘the wild’.

Curator Paulo Heckenhoff who we met during in a perfect ambiente concerning this topic having lunch at restaurant Leite, introduced us to this very special attitude towards multiculturalism. He drew also the lines to the ways of modernism developed in art as well as the spreading around the country of Brazil. He stated provocativly that the Brazilian art modernism was cultivated first in Recife and Pernambuco before getting well known in the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. This issue was illustrated in a exhibition made by him, entitled ?? / look at catalogue. One remark of board member Christiene de Baan was that the translation of modernism in art in Brazil seems to be more well thought-out than the ‘quick Chinees implementation’. Heckenhoff did a project proposal around this topic also connected to artist Lother Baumgartner and bird voices; he will send more detailed information.

Regarding the third Made in Mirrors partner in Africa, Angola the historical roots point to Angola as another place with a Dutch colonial past as a choice that could make sense. Paulo Heckenhoff just came back from the Photobiennal in Luanda. Following his recommendations, this is a trace MiM will follow in order to find a forth partner for 2009.

Visiting the design center, the State University and the Joaquim Nabuco Foundation where Cristiana Tejo worked as a curator for five years and where Moacir dos Anjos as a director will establish a more interdisciplinary approach in future and that is located in a former institution for mental illness, as a overall impression it can be stated that cultural policy and practice are much more bound to daily live than in the Netherlands or China so that the merge between high and low culture is very present. Or in other words, the dividing line between both is not very visible. For example the educational programs are not divided in amateurs or professionals, but aim at everybody for whom this could be interesting. Surprisingly enough there’s no fine art academy yet after the 70’s in Recife – people who want to become an artist enroll for art educator classes and go on by themselves. In the next year, try-outs of a complete master of fine arts are presented because of the huge demand, as the teachers of State University as well as Cristiana Tejo told us. On the level of artistic practice, the connection to handicraft is most obvious for example in the Cordel books where wood cuts are used or vice versa, Cordel books that inspired the gorgeous wood cuts of Borges or Samico who we were lucky to visit in his house and studio. Here, the link to tattoo culture in the Amazon area was visible as well as to contemporary graffiti
artists as Nunca. To throw just with one other example here, at Brasília Teimosa the dancer Mika Silva, director of Centro de Desenvolvimento Social e Cultural Deveras, set up groups for different ages with Maracatu and Mosaic in order to strengthen the sense of personality and community in the neighborhood, also with possibilities of a professional career.
On the other side of the coin, contemporary art practice seem to be much more reflective on the community as well as embedded in it. The central question is maybe a little bit more often ‘how does art relate to its surroundings?’, a concern that is familiar with Het Domein’s approach to the different cultural practices of today.

Another topic that popped up regularly during our visiting program was the attention for
ecology and sustainability. Not only because of the ‘Al Gore’-perspective of saving the earth,
but maybe much more because of the consideration the recycled materials are free resources
and cost nothing. This approach is presumably widely unknown for the First World art initiatives dedicated to that issue, as for example Cradle to Cradle with their central statement of ‘Waste
is a design mistake’ or Latitude. This thematic area is also relevant for China and already
investigated by the MiM project of Els Beusen, so a continuation in Brazil from a specific angle
could be appealing. Hinting back to the Al Gore-theme, it is worth noticing that the rise of sea
level at the Brazilian shore brought dangerous sharks, but even worse takes away the lively
beaches at Recife’s coast line that are a major social and cultural meeting point. Thus, to help
a hand with our Dutch expertise it would be a wonderful idea to build some dykes for Recife
or, at least, some dykes of friendship with Made in Mirrors.

As the quality of Graffiti is very high, it surprises very much that the quality of art is quite low. Without speaking this out loud, the portfolio session and 15 min talks to 18 local artists in Recife and the impressions of Rio, gave an interesting insight view of the local scene. The body occupation of Brazilian artists about which Cristiana Tejo had talked a lot, was illustrated and revealed parallels to the sometimes quite cruel meat- and flesh obsession of Chinese artists in the nineties. Also performance art is very present because of this body focus, a fact that is triggering concerning the Het Domein – joint venture of Zomerzone, where a collaboration around performativity between the museum and a theater company is achieved in summer 2008. Performance art knows a certain revival the last year(s), as also indicated by the Metropolis M edition of December 2007.

Shortly about Rio de Janeiro:
Via the professional connection to the Fonds BKVB we were attended to stay in the artist in residence project Capacete run by Helmut Batista in Rio (www.capacete.com). His approach of AIR presented itself as a very well done model with lots of opportunities for the foreigner to get connected to the city – I ‘m glad that experienced it.

Furthermore we attended an inauguration worthwhile naming at Duplex Gallery and established a connection between the gallery owner and two Dutch artists running a favela painting project – some curiosity about their future collaboration is present. Also the visit to A Gentil Carioca Gallery was of value because it is one of the few relevant galleries in Rio.