Rivane Neuenschwander (Belo Horizonte, Brasil, 1967), expõe “Dominó Caníbal na Sala Verónicas em Murcia (Espanha), até 12 de Dezembro. Sobre a mostra publica-se a seguir o texto do comissário Cuauhtémoc Medina.

“Though Neuenschwander’s work refuses to limit itself to any specific methodology or thematic boundary, the insistence on a space of social and sentient immanence is a constant running through her approach to objects, substances, signs and behaviours. Her projects, films and installations operate effectively, or sensorially, as an activation of essentially social modes of action, belief and participation in works coupling literality with surprise. By inviting the public to make an offering of their wishes to produce votive installations (I Wish Your Wish, 2003), or following ants at carnival, as they carry confetti to their nest instead of leaves (Quarta-Feira de Cinzas/Epilogue, 2006, in collaboration with Cao Guimarães), and instilling natural substances and processes with a sense of formal seriousness, Neuenschwander conjures up an idea of an art that involves a “participating consciousness” capable of cutting through the distinctions between conceptual knowledge and sensory experience. As such, rather than piecing together a creative, stylistic or methodological identity, Neuenschwander outlines an omnivorous trajectory.

Over recent years, Neuenschwander has returned, again and again, to the space of accident and uncertainty, and their tensions with cultural practices trying to control or channel fate, desire and belief. Devoid of any kind of spiritual or transcendent mystification, her interest lies instead in an exploration and transformation of the media involved in popular rituals and the way they operate between individuals and communities. One of the subjects under focus is the central role that miracles play in Catholic visuality, a by-product of the Portuguese-Spanish colonisation of the New World.

For her intervention at Dominó Caníbal, Neuenschwander has appropriated spaces depicted in altarpieces of Latin American popular votive offerings—the paintings in which the faithful pay testimony to the interruption of the profane order with the appearance of a miracle, of the extraordinary—and has transformed them into abstract domains. By removing the anecdotal elements, figures and objects from these images, she has turned them into geometric murals extending over the space of the beholder. These domains violate the separation between the holy and the profane in the temple. The artist has observed an unwritten convention in these paintings: the miracle takes place anywhere except in the temple itself. Neuenschwander therefore uses the exvoto to question the public nature of the interventions in PAC Murcia, introducing into it a domestic, personal, albeit altered, dimension.

In addition, the artist continues her exploration of projects with a participative nature, inviting visitors to record their most inner fears, as the conceptual opposite of exvotos. Playing against the accepted utopian drive of participative arts, this archive will draw the image of a community woven from its fears.”

Cuauhtémoc Medina

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