-"Comigo-ninguém-pode", por Regina Vater.
-"Comigo-ninguém-pode", por Paulo Herkenhoff.
-"The Poetry of Art", Madeline Irvine.
- Rejoining the Spiritual: the Land in ContemporaryLatin American Art/February 14 – March 31, 1994 Maryland Institute College of Art):
-"Cannibalism and Syncretism versus Colonialism", by Regina Vater
COMIGO-NINGUÉM-PODE, por Regina Vater
Já
radicada em Nova York, após receber minha Guggenheim (1980), quando
convidada para expor na exposição "AQUI", (primeira
exposição de arte de vanguarda de artistas latino-americanos
realizada na cidade de Los Angeles), na Fisher Gallery da Universidade da
Califórnia, em 1984; realizei a primeira instalação da
série dos "Comigo Ninguém Pode". Essa obra, que foi
uma homenagem à "Tropicália", DO MEU GRANDE E INESQUECÍVEL
AMIGO/COLEGA
HÉLIO OITICICA, tinha porém como partido um conceito bem diverso.
O que
me motivou a iniciar esta série de instalações foi a
leitura sobre a"Árvore da Vida" e sobre os "Deuses que
Morrem e Renascem" do livro de Sir James George Frazer: "A Rama
Dourada". Dessa leitura entendi que os deuses que morrem e renascem estariam
vinculados à perenidade da vegetação em nosso planeta
através de uma planta que lhes era símbolo. Osíris, se
não me engano, estaria conectado ao papiro e ao jacinto, a flor que
carrega seu nome. Por aí vai, mesmo o próprio Cristo é
conectado através da madeira da cruz à
mitológica árvore da vida.
A minha
escolha do "Comigo Ninguém Pode" como metáfora ou
alegoria para a árvore da vida se originou no desejo de homenagear
o povo brasileiro, em sua vitalidade e capacidade de sobreviver com paciência
e esperança às adversidades que se abatem de forma constante
e endêmica. Desse jeito eu estaria também criando uma relação
simbólica de nosso povo aos "Deuses
que Morrem e Renascem".
Em 1982 (data registrada, em parte, do material adquirido), comprei de um
fotógrafo lambe-lambe (Ipanema - Rio) uma enorme quantidade de fotografias
3X4, que me possibilitaram desenvolver esta série de instalações
(já foram realizadas mais de oito).
Foi na imagem dos rostos dos "filhos de santo" velados por uma cortina de contas, durante a descida/posse dos Orixás, que encontrei o sentido do aspecto físico destas instalações. A sabedoria poética dessa imagem que simboliza como o rosto do divino se oculta em sua forma terrestre é que me deu a dica do aspecto formal desta série.
A planta, em meu trabalho, personificaria a presença da energia sagrada
da vida, velada pela cortina dos rostos anônimos. O sagrado tanto está
na planta como estaria na "árvore dos rostos". A planta personificaria
a presença da divindade e ao mesmo tempo seria o símbolo da
Árvore da Vida.
A "Árvore da Vida", ou o Axis Mundis, é um símbolo
mítico universal. Ela seria a porta de entrada para uma outra dimensão,
a passagem da
multiplicidade para a unidade, da mortalidade para a imortalidade. É
sob a árvore da vida que a conexão entre o mundo material e
o mundo espiritual se estabelece. O Buda atingiu a iluminação
debaixo de uma árvore. No Nepal, as cerimônias de iniciação
ocorrem no topo de uma árvore. Os shamans Machi da região de
Mapuchi, no Chile, também sobem a uma árvore para estabelecer
contactos com o mundo espiritual. Com os aborígines na Austrália
também ocorre o mesmo.
Na universalidade deste mito eu vejo como fica clara a transmissão
a níveis do inconsciente coletivo do nível de importância
da nossa interdependência com o mundo vegetal.
Sem vegetação, a vida animal não ocorreria no planeta.
Esta conexão ecológica a níveis arcaicos é um
tema presente em meu trabalho desde minha primeira instalação,
em 1970.
Para esclarecer algo mais sobre as cortinas de xeroxes em preto-e-branco que
circundam a planta, eu diria que: Nessas tiras de xeroxes se vêem milhares
de rostos de várias idades, raças e classes sociais. De acordo
com José Celso Martinez Correa, que usou uma dessas instalações
para fazer uma performance em 1992 no teatro Oficina - São Paulo, essas
são as faces da "Nossa Família", não da nossa
família individual, mas da nossa família no sentido geral de
nação.
Como brasileiros, é admirável que tenhamos sido capazes de preservar
certas sabedorias herdadas das tradições africanas e indígenas
e, ao mesmo tempo, estarmos abertos para a contemporaneidade. Somos uma nação
de indivíduos de origens diversas que se mesclaram e dissolveram suas
grandes diferenças sob a compreensão da dor e da sobrevivência
a situações adversas. Quanto a esta questão, creio que
o Brasil está na vanguarda dos povos da terra, onde os acirrados conflitos
raciais e culturais levam a existência do indivíduo a um isolamento
paranóico e espiritualmente empobrecido. É lógico que
não
pretendo colocar uma cortina sobre as nossas moléstias de cunho social
(os preconceitos raciais em formato brasileiro, os problemas econômicos
e políticos). Creio que qualquer brasileiro de sã consciência
vive ciente desses problemas. Vejo, contudo, que as nossas genuínas
qualidades são constantemente desprezadas por nós mesmos. Para
mim, parte da sabedoria que o Brasil tem a oferecer ao mundo tem a ver com
essa vitalidade alegre sempre conectada à esperança e à
vida, aliada à nossa convivência gentil ao nível do "Ser"
e do "Humano".
Ao visitar o Brasil, o Dalai Lama apontou como uma de nossas melhores qualidades
a nossa preocupação de fazer com que o outro sempre se sinta
bem. Como para ele o princípio fundamental da solução
dos problemas do mundo seria o cultivo do chamado "Bom coração"
(desde ele seja de caráter genuíno e indiscriminado...) Penso
que não estamos tão distantes assim, como certos outros lugares
do mundo estão, de atingir um viver mais
harmônico e mais sábio.
"Comigo-ninguém-pode", por Paulo Herkenhoff
Arquivos, esquecimento social, perda da identidade cultural, desbotamento e matéria banal, repetição e anonimato, perda de identidade. É contra um estado de abandono que nasce comigo-ninguém-pode, que é planta, arte e patuá natural.
Comigo ninguém pode é sobretudo voz interior. Reafirma a potência do sujeito, nascida sob uma cortina de opacidade — tiras com fotos 3X4 instensificam a banalidade através da xerox: repeticão e diferença em milhares de fotografias de identidade oriundas de um lambe-lambe de rua. São fotos do povo da rua. Multiplicam-se fotos e pintas brancas na folha do comigo-ninguém-pode. É desse universo de retratos de esquecidos-vivos, desses seres de individualidade dissolvida na precariedade imagética, é daí que Regina Vater constrói uma estranha cosmogonia onde se parecem desenrolar dramas e confrontos entre a natureza eletrônica destituída de sentidos, que não encontra sua razão poética, e uma natureza mítica ancestral tomada padrão vivo de valores. A matéria quase abjeta da xerox, suporte das fotos de identidade, enfrenta o viço vital e simbólico da planta, num circuito do destino da matéria vegetal. Se, para Vater, existe uma crise, não serão a autonomia da arte ou a modernidade e a pura tecnologia que apostarão respostas. Nada então é nostalgia, mas constatação e, depois, possibilidade. Não se trata de um animismo, agitando um terreno em ruínas. Na obra de Regina Vater, o sentido iconológico se trama entre antigos símbolos e novas alegorias.
Nos anos 60, na sua obra a figura do nó era ambigüidade: repressão, constrição da liberdade, mas também resistência. Outra via constrói agora a coesão. O shamanismo — dimensão do artista para Beuys — seria o ato de religar indivíduos (semântica da religião) pelas possibilidades da arte e seu mistério. Se a escravidão foi um brutal corte no templo cultural não resultou, no entanto, em paralisia, e Vater age na matriz dos "segredos do tempo" (Karsz) desse deslocamento traumático.
Vater alinha-se na tradição de uma política da sensorialidade do corpo, aberta por Oiticica, com quem manteve estreita amizade. Comigo-ninguém-pode — a dimensão do nome se multiplica em rede de indivíduos como um diagrama social — é modelo de sociabilidade, uma rede de solidariedade. Exílio e diáspora, biografia da artista e história social, reconstituem uma territorialidade onde o sujeito pode ainda confirmar seus mitos, resistir e lutar pela individualização.
Rio de Janeiro, 3 de abril de 1995
PAULO HERKENHOFF
The poetry of art
By Madeline
Irvine
Special to the Austin American-Statesman
Austin-based
artist
Regina
Vater
builds a view
of her world
from nature
and her
Brazilian
background
Caption: Austin-based artist Regina Vater makes what she calls ‘visual poetry,’ including the banner ‘Feminino,’ a poem written in Portuguese to form the shape of an abstract ‘A.’
There is a Brazilian saying that goes something like this: "Your country
gives you the compass and the ruler, but you make your own path." In
a career that’s spanned 30 years, video and installation artist Regina
Vater has cleared a path to connect archaic beliefs with contemporary life.
From her native Brazil to New York during the fertile ‘70’s, and
now into Austin, her home since 1985, Vater has gathered significant honors
along the way: she represented Brazil in the 1976 Venice Biennial and received
a Guggenheim grant in 1980.
Vater is one of a number of nationally and internationally recognized artists
who make her home in Austin, but whose work is easier to catch out of town.
Happily, you can see two of her installations in "Ceremony of the Spirit,"
a touring exhibition at the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria through
Sunday.
To enter Vater’s home, which she shares with her husband, artist Bill
Lundberg, is to be struck by color, music, texture and incense. The walls
are sunflower gold, music by a Brazilian composer friend is playing, lace
hangs in the windows, and patterned textiles adorn tables and encase pillows;
everything mingles with your heightened scent and tactile senses.
As Vater talks about her life and influences, she easily quotes poet Stephen
Mallarmé, Confucius and others. Philosophy, anthropology, poetry and
nature enter the mix as they have influenced her art, and one easily slips
into Vater’s rhythm. There is a timelessness to it; it is how many artists
experience the world.
Sub/head:
Much of Regina Vater’s artwork includes installations, such as her 1994 work "Charm for Food and Good Fortune," combining ecological, political and metaphysical elements.
A cutting-edge artist, Vater approaches her subjects anew with each work.
"I’m an experimental artist because Brazil is an experimental country,"
she said. While Vater began as a painter, she quickly switched to other media:
text to create symbols that she calls "visual poetry," videos and
installations
Her subject matter also has grown over time. Like a musical composition, she
often returns to subjects to re-address and deepen her work. Her current work
combines the ecological, the political and the metaphysical. Vater believes
art is "not something you do to sell in the streetmarket; art is something
that comes from your roots and is about sharing."
She and her husband recently returned from eight months in Brazil, where Vater
created five installations, gave workshops on installation art and lectured.
She said she considers Brazil the wellspring of her work. A Portuguese-speaking
country, Brazil is a rich mix of cultures, nature and world influences. She
laughs remembering a panel on multiculturalism in Brazil this year. "My
husband said "This is ridiculous, adopting the idea of multiculturalism
in Brazil,’ " Vater said.
For Vater, Brazil is multicultural, it is an interaction between native Indian,
European (specifically Portuguese), African (specifically Yorubá) and
Asian cultures. "The Portuguese," said Vater, "had Spain at
their back door and the ocean ahead." They had an open sense of the world,
exploring Polynesia and Asia, absorbing rather than observing, their cultures.
Brazil was a laboratory for the Portuguese, and Vater, who was schooled by
French nuns and speaks four languages, sees her work as an expression of Brazil’s
cultures.
In the early ‘70s, Vater was influenced by the work of a group of artists
who had created concrete poetry and visual poetry in the 1950s. Concrete poetry
uses the visual structure of the letters and words to create an added layer
of meaning. This visual design reinforces the theme and meaning of the poem,
as in Augusto de Campos’ poem composed of four large letters, spelling
"luxo" (luxury), which are constructed out of many small letters
spelling "lixo" (garbage).
Visual poetry, which contains images and icons as well as text, is not only
orthodox; it is more open, drawing from the popular culture as well as many
other sources.
Brazilians felt a language barrier with the Spanish-speaking countries that
border Brazil. While Brazilians spoke Spanish, their neighbors did not speak
Portuguese. Vater and others made visual poetry using text to create symbols
that could be understood between cultures. They wanted to make art akin to
Chinese ideograms, the calligraphy that embodies the sense of the word in
picture symbols, such as the physical aspects of rain or the idea of ‘mountain,’
rather than using an alphabet to spell words.
"You need to go inside the art to decipher the code; it’s an exercise
for the brain," Vater said. For her, art is like a detective story: Viewers
work their ways through interwoven layers of meaning.
Vater’s titles are important clues. "It must broaden the feeling
or understanding of the work," she said. In "Ita/Ota," one
of her works at AMOA, both words mean "stone"; one is a native Brazilian
Indian word, the other Yorubá. Vater’s materials are a key to
deciphering the meaning of her work. "Ita/Ota" is made of natural
elements: Stones rest in bowls of water imbedded in sand, with burning candles
reflected ad infinitum in a box of mirrors. For Vater, stones signify the
sacred in religions across the world. All the elements of time are present
from the momentary to the geological.
In an interesting contrast, Vater often makes installations of fragile materials,
especially feathers. This interplay between the concrete and the ephemeral
occurs throughout her work and underscores time as an important element. "Memories,"
the video installation at AMOA, carries a slower sense of time than we experience
in our current lives and quietly depicts time’s formative qualities.
Vater said she likes the intimate contact with nature she finds in Texas.
She often uses elements of nature to talk about the metaphysical. Yet the
sense of transformation she seeks come from her formative years in Brazil.
There, at Carnival, she remembers seeing a man with a silver cane made out
of cigarette paper. She combines this folk freedom in gathering materials
with experimentation and an openness to the ‘new’, which often is
based technologically and easier to access in the States.
While many cutting-edge artists use science and technology to make art, Vater
uses technology, particularly video, to connect with ancient or "archaic"
ways of living with nature and to bring those values into contemporary life.
For Vater, Brazil connects easily with archaic cultures. It is that connection
she treasures, which links us to a hierarchy of values that connect the human
to the natural world.
For more information about "Ceremony of the Spirit" call AMOA at
458-8191.
Austin American-Statesman November 2, 1995 Pages 41, 42
GUARDIANS OF THE LAND
AMALIA MESA-BAINS, PH.D.
Regina Vater’s art also springs from her Brazilian history and spiritual
memory. She describes her philosophy:"Being Brazilian, I learned from
the important presence of the African and Native American traditions in Brazilian
culture that the sacred is intimately connected to Nature. That the sacred
emerges from Nature".
The artist refers to the aesthetics of precariousness as the poetic, mythological
and metaphysical approaches she uses in her visual expression. This concern
for the preservation of Mother Earth and cultural pluralism is communicated
through metaphor, symbolism and allegory. The installation Charm for Food
and Good Fortune seeks to reclaim the traditional wisdom of connection with
nature, wisdom that could strengthen contemporary society.
Composed of space marked off by wire, feathers and a hanging charm, the piece
is inspired by the concept of protection from the forces of the invisible
world. Both the African tradition of the children of Oshún (the hanging
feathered calabash) and Native-American tradition (the Patwin tribal Hesi
dance) deal with this possibility of collective protection. This charm, like
a prayer or offering, can bring hope.
For many of these artists the desire to examine the histories of their homelands
has grown in proportion to their time and distance from that original source.
Even after fifteen and twenty years of residing in the United States, the
powerful force of geo-cultural identity continues to exert itself in their
art. Man who were caught in diasporas following dictatorships have since returned
on journeys that investigated both their contemporary situations and their
remembered pasts. These migrations and trans-migrations have brought a continuous
shifting of experiences, values and perspectives between two temporal and
spatial realities. Immeasurably changed by each journey, they have developed
visions of history and geography that test their own remembrances through
social imagination.
They have been distant enough to desire reclaiming a place they have partially
lost, and this perspective has brought them into the artistic and intellectual
vanguard of their Latin American homelands. The discourse on cultural identity,
which has influenced the United States so profoundly, has provoked their own
critical ideologies in ways not yet manifest in Latin America.
El arte de Regina Vater también brota de su historia y su memoria espiritual
brasileñas.
Ella describe así su filosofía:
‘Siendo brasileña, aprendí, de la importante presencia
de las tradiciones africana y americana nativa en la cultura brasileña
que lo sagrado está íntimamente relacionado con la naturaleza.
Que lo sagrado surge de la naturaleza.’
La artista se refiere a la estética de la precariedad como las aproximaciones
poética, mitológica y metafísica de que se vale en su
expresión visual. Este interés por la preservación de
la Madre Tierra y del pluralismo cultural se comunica mediante la metáfora,
el simbolismo y la alegoría. La instalación Amuleto alimento
y buena suerte procura reclamar la sabiduría tradicional de la conexión
con la naturaleza, la sabiduría que podría fortalecer la sociedad
contemporánea.
Compuesto de un espacio delimitado por alambre, plumas y un amuleto colgante,
la pieza se inspira en el concepto de protección contra las fuerzas
del mundo invisible. Tanto la tradición africana de los hijos de Ochún
(el colgante güiro emplumado) como la tradición americana nativa
(la danza tribal hesi de los patwin) incluye la posibilidad de la protección
colectiva. Este amuleto, al igual que una oración o una ofrenda, puede
ofrecer esperanza.
Para muchos de estos artistas el deseo de examinar las historias de sus países
de origen ha crecido en proporción al tiempo y la distancia que se
interpone entre ellos y esa fuente original. Aun después de quince
y veinte años de residir en los Estados Unidos, la poderosa fuerza
de la identidad geocultural continúa ejerciéndose en su arte.
Muchos de los que se vieron atrapados en las diásporas que siguieron
a las dictaduras han regresado luego al objeto de investigar sus situaciones
contemporáneas y el pasado que recordaban. Estas migraciones y transmigraciones
han producido un continuo intercambio de experiencias, valores y perspectivas
entre dos realidades temporales y espirituales y ponen a prueba sus propias
remembranzas mediante la imaginación social. Han estado lo bastante
lejos para desear reclamar un lugar que parcialmente han perdido, y esta perspectiva
los ha situado a la vanguardia artística e intelectual de sus patrias
latinoamericanas.
El discurso de la identidad cultural, que ha influido tan profundamente a
los Estados Unidos, ha provocado sus propias ideologías críticas
de modos que aún no se han manifestado en América Latina.
"Cannibalism and Syncretism versus Colonialism"
by Regina Vater
1992, Chicago College Art Association
Before I start, I should say a few words about the photographic series that you will be seeing projected on screen during most of my talk and why I choose them.
I started the "Nature Morte" series in 1987. Its title is a jeu de mots. "Nature Morte" is the original academic name for Still Life, but its literal meaning is Dead Nature. From this you can deduce that the work has to do with ecology.
To give you more clues about the work, I must say that in the Afro-Brazilian traditions which inspires a big part of my work, it is customary to make offerings of food to the gods, just like in other nature-connected religions around the world. And the gods themselves are forces of nature.
These photos were also inspired by the Flemish Still Lives.
But unlike the Flemish Still Lives that were produced to convey the abundance of nature feeding us, my photos have to do with other relationships towards Nature. In these romantic tableaux as in our daily civilized lives it is hard to perceive the nuances of our connections to the holocaust that is taking place in nature right now. It seems as if under our ardent, compulsive desire for unnecessary paraphernalia, there is a destructive loss of desire for the continuation of life on the planet.
These photos that you are looking are not a literal illustration of what I am saying, although, they are directly and indirectly connected to my paper and to the video that I will be showing later on. They act as parallel echoes of my thoughts. I should make one more remark about the use of these photos.
We Brazilians are not used to talk in the direct way that you use in English. We are very much like in the East.
Everybody intensively uses metaphors in Brazil. Portuguese is a very poetic language. We have a proverb that says that everybody has a little bit of a poet in his/her soul.
I’m sure this audience is very used to metaphors. And because of that I am sure that you will not have problems understanding my paper.
The title: "Cannibalism and Syncretism Versus Colonialism" comes from the Brazilian Anthropophagic (Cannibalistic) Manifesto, published during the Week of Modern Art in São Paulo in 1922, during which the avant-garde announced itself in nationalistic terms. (Incidentally, the two main painters associated with this movement were women.)
"We will stop being Frenchified, Portuguesified, Germanized… so as to become truly Brazilianized," declared writer Sérgio Milliet.
Oswald De Andrade, who wrote the "Manifesto da Antropofagia Brasileira", explained that he was inspired by an Amerindian custom of devouring the most valiant or intelligent of their invaders in order to incorporate their most desirable qualities. "We must cannibalize our ‘sacred enemies’ (European culture), said Andrade, retaining only what is beneficial for Brazilians.
Even earlier, Machado de Assis (a great 19th century mulatto writer,) transposed the cannibal attitude into the intellectual realm, when he used a ruminator’s stomach as a metaphor for the head. "All suggestions, he said, after being broken down and mixed, are ready for a new mastication, a complicated chemistry in which it is no longer possible to distinguish the assimilated organism from the assimilated material."
Being born in Rio, former capital of the Brazilian-Portuguese Empire, I grew up in the midst of tropical beaches, Carnival, golden baroque churches, Parisian neoclassical architecture, and lived near an immense 18th century botanical garden. As a child, I read the 19th century Brazilian poetry, which praised the Native American’s braveness and was also abolitionist. In my adolescence, I came in contact with pre-Socratic philosophy, with Krishnamurti and with Russian authors such as Nikolai Gogol, Dostoyevsky, etc. And during this process I fed on African cuisine and all the Hollywood films I could possibly watch.
In the late 60’s I encountered and was deeply touched by the "Tropicalia" movement, which was in a certain way the continuation of the Anthropophagic movement.
Caetano Veloso, one of the "Tropicalia" leaders, and a very famous musician and poet, recently had the opportunity to present the American audience with a partial but intelligent insight on the significance of the Tropicalia and Anthropophagic movements in Brazil, in an article he wrote for the Sunday New York Times, on Carmem Miranda.
These among many others were some of the suggestions that became the marrow of my spirit…
What I try to do in my work is to bring together all those influences which help transform my art into a contemporary vehicle of Brazilian cultural invention and aesthetics, using a transmedia approach — a term invented by my husband Bill Lundberg, who is also an artist, for a course he created for the Art Department of the Univesity of Texas at Austin.
With cheap, non-conventional and ephemeral materials under a system I call "Aesthetics of Precariousness," I deliver my statements through the metaphors I try to convey in my work.
Above all, my art is a medium for philosophical and poetic ideas inspired by Amazonian and Afro-Brazilian traditions.
The tape I will be showing is a version of a video, which will be showing in the video-installation "Green", in the show "Ver America" at the Royal Museum in Antwerp, starting this month.
Last January I showed another simplified version of this video in my Artist’s window installation also called "Green" at the Donnell Library Media Center in New York City.
In the Belgium installation the title comes from the green light which I use inside the caravel transforming it into a lamp.
This is another clue to my thoughts on the colonization of the Americas. Green light equals a free passage, permission, and permissiveness for exploitation.
I live in Texas, which receives a big flow of Mexican handcraft. The caravel I used is obviously Mexican, an important Mexican symbol of the European conquest.
Like in a detective story, I try to create many interwoven layers of meanings. The goal in this piece is to offer, with tempered irony, diverse readings from the political, the ecological and the metaphysical.
The shape of the installation also reminds me of Carmem Miranda, whose costumes were a syncretic transubstantiation of diverse cultural influences. Principal among Miranda’s influences were the baianas’ costumes, originating in Africa and used by street vendors in Bahia.
The plexyglass containers in the shape of Mesoamerican pyramids are filled with popcorn without the usual butter and salt, which is added at the movie house refreshments stands.
If you wish, you could add that link to your reading of the work, but its meaning goes beyond that and is related to the native American "Mother Corn" and to Afro-Brazilian rituals where popcorn is used as a cleansing device, by which I hope to symbolize a future cleansing of colonialism’s hunger.
The iron from which the caravel is made can be related to Ogum, the African war god connected to transportation. Ogum is also related to Oxossi, a Brazilian Afro/Indian god, protector of trees and vegetation, who can be related to the ecology of our American continents.
Thus you can see an assimilation of everything as metaphor in order to create metacommunication, a communication beyond the explicit and the literal. I hope that by regurgitating this transcontinental cultural meal I could provide food for your minds.
Now I will be showing a brief fragment of my video "Green".
REGINA VATER
by Veronique François
November 12, 1991
A study of use of pluralism in transmittance of an ecological alert
Critic Florencia Bazzano Nelson refers to it as "extra-formal content,"
which she defines as "content… denoting something that is signified,
some idea to be conveyed, something to be interpreted…" The
artist herself calls it "meta communication" which "reaches
beyond literal meanings or linear forms of discourse (occurring often)
in poetic texts, literature and in the visual arts through the use of
metaphors, symbolism, allegory or through the structure of the text itself,
by its editing and organization."
Whatever the term used, it is certain that this "it", being
the complex multi-layering of meaning, is the signature trait found in
all works by Brazilian artist, Regina Vater. Having established international
status as a video, photography, installation and performing artist, it
sometimes becomes difficult to classify her work stylistically except
perhaps to say that pluralism of ideas, in part to reflect the political/socio-economic
pluralism of her country, is a major element, whatever the media. She
is concerned "…with diverse ideas and media rather than contriving
(her) work into a single formalist style or thematic idea."
This is not to suggest a lack of continuity in subject matter. Quite the
contrary, Vater’s underlying concern for the past 20 years has been
with issues ecological and political in nature. Characteristically of
Brazilian sensibilities, she leads the spectator by way of delicate metaphors,
word plays, poetic nuance and literary references on an intellectual journey,
"inviting" him to use these tools to decipher the meta messages
contained in her references to myth, ritual, the passage of time and to
the world of metaphysics. The traveler almost always, at some point, winds
up in a state of ecological/political alert. Perhaps this is the same
realization made by Lewis Carol’s White Rabbit (of "Alice in
Wonderland", Vater’s "bible". The rabbit is as often-used
symbol for industrialized nations in her Yauti series.), when he stammers
"Oh dear, oh dear, I’m afraid I’m too late."
By no means is it being suggested that Vater’s work be reduced to
a single statement. That would be contrary to the very essence of the
pluralism, which defines her art. There is a looseness about the structure
of the components in her work, which allows each spectator to travel his
own journey at whatever speed and depth he chooses.
It is the purpose of this essay; however, to illustrate the element of
ecological warning that is inherent in most of Vater’s work. This
will be done by concentrating on photographs from the two series: "Naturaleza
Still Alive" (New York, 1974) and "Nature Morte" (Austin,
1987), and on a recent video by her entitled "Green".
Individually, each of the three works to be studied is powerful in its
own right. Studied together, with Naturaleza Still Alive on one end, Nature
Morte on the other, and "Green" in between, a potent sequence
illustrating the cycle of life and death – interpretable on several
levels (ecological, political, metaphysical) – is created.
The first hint of sequential connections comes from the titles. As with
much of her work, Vater adds layers to her art, which she likens to poetry,
through her use of words. "Luxo-Lixo" (luxury-garbage, a title
borrowed from concrete poet, Augusto de Campos) is a photographic essay
on New York opulence and garbage. "Escape da Paisagem" (escape
from landscape) is a photograph of a piece of glass, totally blackened
save the word "ART" through which a "landscape" of
a multi-dwelling complex and what looks like the wirings of a high voltage
power line can be see.
Similarly, "Naturaleza Still Alive" and "Nature Morte"
are both word plays on "Still Life", a twist in the case of
the former to connote life, whereas in the latter, the contrary is suggested
– dead nature. Hence, the parameters of the cycle are established,
and "Green" fills the middle as the ongoing process of life.
Choosing titles in three different languages must also suggest an awareness
of pluralistic societies.
The same sequential links are established through the choice of a subject
matter and medium used for each piece. All three pieces center on food
or on the ritual of consuming/producing food. In "Naturaleza",
the uneaten remains intimate a meal of the immediate past — a meal
for at least two people where it is imagined conversation, an exchange
of thoughts transpired. The leftovers of the repast suggests a sharing,
an equally beneficial transaction that promotes growth.
It is important to note the medium chosen for this series – color
photographing. The image is flat and graphic and is produced on grid-lined
paper on which are scribbled notations of place, time, weather conditions
– much like in a diary. This attests to the immediacy or the contemporary
quality of this series. The image reproduced has a snapshot effect —
something quick, transitory – no time to carefully arrange the set
because life is pushing forward. Food is being consumed. Growth, life,
sustenance spill from this image.
The tonal richness of a photograph combined with a chiaroscuro use of
natural light give "Nature Morte" a completely different feel.
Timelessness oozes from the elegant linens and china. The careful composition
with its solemn grace alludes to still lifes in the tradition of the Flemish
painters where "dead animals were… used as reference to the
abundance of Nature providing game meat to nourish mankind…"
Vater uses fur, bones and feathers as metaphors for the remains of an
ecology which today is being destroyed in order to produce societal fineries.
China and silverware come to represent "the greed for excesses of
opulence."
(Abundance is no longer measured by nature but by sophistication of fabrication.)
This elegantly horrible banquet has a stiff price attached to it. Sensual
and seductive as this photograph may first appear, it is about death.
It is Vater’s warning of a terrible outcome if we don’t take
heed, as a species, of the health of our Mother Planet – an organ
of which we are only a small part.
The video "Green", although it alludes to the times of the discovery
of the Americas by the Old World, has more to do with the present in that
it illustrates what is going on right now in the food link between industrialized
and Third World countries. It is a multilayered presentation juxtaposing
historical images of the conquest of America by Europe with imagery of
ancient Indian relics. Several segments show the natural beauty of the
land alternately intercut with scenes of indigenous fruit, shown whole
and then cut and sliced (suggesting consumption) and with scenes of Vater’s
gorgeous and deadly "Natures Mortes". The message, of course,
is that the industrial world is killing that which feeds it. This use
of irony and metaphor is very Brazilian and present in Vater’s work
as far back as 1970, when she performed her first installation, "Magi(o)cean",
on Joatinga Beach, in Rio de Janeiro. The performance/ritual used beach
garbage in paying homage to Oxumaré and Ogum-Beira-Mar, Afro-Brazilian
deities responsible ironically for the hope and protection of the seashore.
"Green", being in video format, a medium capable of conveying
time in the present, is the ideal middle link in this "time triptych"
about ecology. As Vater states, "There is a proper medium for each
statement you are making." Choose it wrongly, and it can make the
difference between a successful work of art and one that is "very
academic".
The ecological theme runs deep in most of Vater’s work. She demonstrates
her thought on the precariousness of our situation by focusing on the
rituals of consumption as it relates to food. This same vehicle can be
used to examine the three pieces of art in a political light. The sharing
implicit in "Naturaleza Still Life" is perhaps an ideal political
situation where nations of all standings divide equally and somewhat responsibly
the wealth of the earth in such a manner as would promote equal growth.
"Green" brings us up to date historically on the present trade
imbalance. And "Nature Morte" again foreshadows an ominous end
should we fail to rectify the global lopsidedness.
ADENDOS
Regina Vater e Hélio Oiticica.
Austin American-Statesman November 2, 1995 Pages 41, 42
