The group exhibition “Border Zones” marks the end of another cycle of the Goethe Institut Salvador – Vila Sul Artistic Residency Program (Bahia, Brazil). Occupying the two gallery spaces of the institute, the exhibition is curated by Tiago Sant’Ana and brings together works developed during the residency by our represented artists Iris Helena and No Martins. Also taking part in the show are artists Rafael BQueer and Ventura Profana.
No Martins presents a series of works that address the issue of mass incarceration and how the black and poor population are victims of the Brazilian penal system. The installation “Modus operandi da justiça penal” starts from the popular Brazilian saying “The rope always breaks at its weakest point” to discuss access to justice, the length of the trials and the normalization of police violence through a punitive sense of the population in Brazil. The two paintings, “Contrariando as estatísticas” and “Suas amarras não me prendem“, discuss forms of resistance against this structure of criminal justice. The artist also presented the performance “Aos que se foram, aos que aqui estão e aos que virão” (“To those who have left, to those who are here and to those who will come”) at the Mercado Modelo square in Salvador, which is a result of his research on the slave trade route from the Port of Luanda, in Angola.
On the other hand, Íris Helena presents “Memorabilia”, in which she merges individual memories with collective experiences from personal photos of different families that have been damaged by time. As the artist juxtaposes different files with different backgrounds and starting points, a hybrid material is generated – a new object, endowed with shadows that complement or eclipse itself, united by the deterioration of the tropical climate. The fading of printed photographic images, often damaged by humidity and fungi, is similar to the exercise of memory in the tropics: it is established from historical ruins, the erasure of narratives, but which still exist in vestiges. Therefore, the artist becomes an archaeologist, although creating another way of contemplating the photographic material, with a new visual repertoire. The video “At negative hands”, also in the exhibition, documents the whole process.
The show runs until 6 November (Visiting times: Mon-Fri, 11 am – 5 pm). For more information, click here.