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For me the creative process is always linked to a question.
As I decided to think my body as an object for the construction of an art piece,
there is no way to leave behind all the stereotypes that relate to me.
There are many stigmas, many questions, many possibilities to understand...
...what this black body means.
From there I start to think my work ('Merci' specially)...
with this question: what is 'this' black body?
Which stereotypes is attached to it
and how I could use that to raise more questions
Not a beginning, a middle and an end
I don't want to bring an artistic work with a concept developed on the begining, middle... whatever
I think a lot about an idea, then I pull it out to the world
to see how the other perceive it, and from there I make this artistic process changing itself
If I think about the path of this work since the first time I made it in Rio de Janeiro
from the provocation of two friends of body art: Sara Panamby and Filipe Espindola
They provoked me with the performance 'pearls before swine'
Where Filipe stitches some pearls on Sara's spine
and during the performance she pulls out all the piercings from his balls
It's a moment of tension and she asked me how could I solve my performance inside that space
By that time my performance was only about painting myself white
and seeing the results in images, I noticed how strong it was to see my black body being painted white.
From there I start to redefine the action of paint this body and how I could think a journey for it in performance
I was thinking about: how is that possible? inside my own country and people still create stigmas to this body
With such diversity, in our country we are native indians, white, black, green, blue... multiple cultures.
And right on the 21st century I still need to face this question.
So then I travel abroad Brazil and when I come back to my city
I start to presence on myself all the social stereotypes related to the black body.
It was never a question before because I've never have left there
So when I come back to São Paulo I start to see all the meaningful questions raised by black movements
which before had no effects on me.
My parents raised me on a way to be 'correct'
and be 'correct' was to not question yourself on the social level.
Then I leave my country and realize that I must question who I am to exist.
So I come back to Sao Paulo and all these questions become very clear
The most interesting thing in all that is...
this performance after Rio de Janeiro, doing it for the first time with Sara and Filipe,
I go to Sao Paulo and meet the artist Paulo Nazareth
and he gives me a text and when I read that text...
at the same time I found myself very related and not related to it
I Identified myself from the perspective of being 'correct' from my parents
Because it was exactly that: straightening your hair, ... it was about being beautiful to please the other,
not to please myself.
I see on this text a very strong material for the developing of this body in performance.
To fit into an hegemonic white system nullifying all other questions and other possibilities of bodies.
In my political question, inside the space, I noticed that being black by itself
you already bring some questions, because you are either a exotic or a marginalized body
You are always in between these two places
this cartesian duality that bothers me a lot.
We can never think about an ambivalence, where you worth this and that, no,
It's always one or another.
then I start to think about these embarrassments.
Like this, I'm black and if I use dark clothes I'm not well dressed and in Sao Paulo, for example...
...I'm going to rob someone
so ok I'm a thief in this place.
Or you use this black body in a very *** place, selling the female body...
I kept thinking how can I use these two sensations to these two distant features
to construct the performance?
Then I realised that nudity still a problem
Anywhere in the world when you present your naked body...
...is a problem
People are frightened,
There is some sort of provocation, there is a tension when you see the other naked
So what should I think for this naked body?
This naked body should create an embarrassment situation
to the other who is watching be constrained
So the positions that I choose to make with that naked body is a place of provocation and embarrassment to the other
And generally this thing... taking stuffs out of holes...
Whatever... I like to do this kind of things too
Not just to shock but there are many other things that comes with it.
Do you want to get pretty?
It goes from an omitted body to impose itself on that place.
It's interesting the 'paint it white'...
is thinking about the way I was raised
Completely Eurocentric hegemony
I graduated from a Pontifical Catholic University
All my professors were white
Many questions start coming, which for me it was never a problem
then after I go abroad I see that there is a problem
because I constructed my artistic thoughts ...
eurocentric, hegemonic...
Thinking about the kind of art that I make.
So I can't get rid of that...
then how can I make a question out of that too?
My idea creating a work like that is to pull out all this existentialist issues that I have to everyone.
If I exist like this is because inside the world there is this way of living
so my role in the world is to debate about this
There is no reason to hide myself...
...or to be creating a resistance that is not real.
I usually say that my work is a performance because I think about an action
The action of this work is 'paint it white'
this is basically the action.
Very simple. I will paint my body white.
I built a poetic doing this action
I realised that the way I display my body in the space brings a shape...
another perspective of how the other sees me
This action has being in construction...
It's a work in process, so everytime I present this work is never the same
It just have the same name and the same action (paint it white)
But it's never the same thing
There is always something different that I'm proposing with this white mask.
So didactically speaking I say that my work is a performance because is an action during that time and space
and that it will change itself, it won't be fixed
I prefer to say that is not dance neither drama, because I'm escaping from the representation of someone
I'm not representing something I'm presenting myself.
Then this representation from dance and drama doesn't fit me anymore.
It's me, myself, inserted in that space.
And since the 60's Joseph Beuys talks about this political body.
I appropriate of these elements, this discourse
From there I build an action in performance
thinking my body in performance.
Being here doing a performance is to reinforce a discourse that I have the right to come and go anywhere.
Few months ago I was invited to do this same work in São Paulo, and when I sent the video...
the curator said that nudity wasn't allowed.
This is ridiculous. Thinking about São Paulo, metropolis.
A city that wants to be New York...
So many questions in that place and suddenly a simple nude body becomes an issue
Being here gives me the strength to keep my path moving
Making my work exists and noticing that is possible to exist in other places
I keep thinking about the diversity, these multiple things...
and being here doing performance, doing my work on the way that I believe that works
is wonderful, priceless
incredible
Specially with this temperature matter
display your nude body in a cold weather
There are other challenges
It's not just a nude body
It's a nude body feeling cold
Many other questions that also compose this structure and make it... stronger
I won't say 'solid' because nothing is fixed
I think that everything is always moving...
That's it.