Venice Biennale,
Sep 01, 2004 - Dec 01, 2004
Venice, Italy
26th International Biennial of Sí¢o Paulo, 2004
by Virginia Gil Araujo
The Brazilian artist Rosana Palazyan, in a different way, manages to improves her position through the introduction of documentary media, offering the public, in a quite subtle and poetic way, stories of Sí£o Paulo's homeless with "Homem do Realejo" (Man of the Organ). It functions in the arena of "social plasticity" when it juxtaposes the stories of the homeless with the fate chosen by the parrot of the organ. They are witnesses to the immense vital energy derived from the ability to sublimate the daily horrors of a nomadic life within the enormous city.
The Homologation of the Self
The artist, nevertheless, stands out in the exhibition when the character doesn't assume a fictitious identity and emerges before a large number of photographs and video installations. An example of this can be found in the video of the performance "Small Sea" by Brazilian artist Fabiano Marques, who told LatinArt: "I assembled a structure meant to be disassembled after a journey on the waters of Sí£o Paulo's southern coast, in the Mar Pequeno (Small Sea). During the journey I recorded a three-hour video that I later edited in order to present a record of my experience. The film was made by a team, but I cannot deny that even though my trip was planned, it was also influenced by chance."
Like many other young artists that participated in the biennial, such as Martín Sastre of Uruguay, Zlatko Kopiljar of Croatia, and Rassim of Bulgaria, Fabiano Marques states that certain elements were inserted deliberately in order to invoke a metaphor of one's homeland into the work. Even while insisting on continuing to operate by repeated acts of rescue, attempting to remain standing in the floating structure, his art pursues the issue of abandonment to the maritime current, while his body continually resists natural situations. In this way, Fabiano Marques refers to the conditions of art produced by an artist on the periphery.
The resonance of his work, as well as that of the Chelpa Farro group, of the Spanish Sierra and the Cuban Capetillo, was left without privacy or protection. In this sense, the works of Mexican artist Miguel Calderón, "Mexico vs. Brazil", and Argentinean artist Jorge Macchi, "Music Box", were more successful. Calderón's work is placed in the best location for watching soccer games, the bar, an ideal space for the presentation of "Ronaldo Cries". His fictitious soccer game changes the outcome of the game so that Mexico wins and provokes the ire of the Brazilians with an ironic sarcasm in showing the decontextualized figure of five time world champion footballer Ronaldinho as a "defeated hero".
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