Dar a Ver pelo encontro [Show up for the meeting]

WOULD IT BE POSSIBLE TO TALK ABOUT AN ESSENTIALLY FEMININE ART OR EVEN A UTERINE STYLE?

Linda Nochlin addresses these questions in Why there were no great women artists?, an article written in 1971 and only translated into Portuguese this year. For her, it is not the qualities considered feminine that make women artists belong to the same group, since “in all instances, women artists and writers seem to be closer to other artists and writers of their own period and perspective than to them. themselves”.

With this statement, she locates artistic production and its interlocutions within a space/time, that is, as a result of the material and historical conditions of the context in which it operates, eliminating the possibility of a practice guided by sex. If just the fact of being a woman is not enough to determine the uniqueness of the works presented here, bringing together four artists in a group exhibition therefore gains political contours and a desire to be together.

That’s why the American Nancy Jones teamed up with other artists who also have the investigation of the image as the starting point of their works. When exhibiting for the first time in Brazil, she shows objects that bring to the discussion what would be the feminine ideal marked by the icons of mass culture.

Fernanda Preto in Estudos de Nu II presents real bodies, but in the pursuit of aesthetic perfection, whether through plastic surgery or photoshop treatments, they become dehumanized. Camila Roriz brings sewing and collage to video, superimposing and duplicating images and noise that also focus on her own body. Finally, Martha Simões collects frames from her daily life, which are reframed into new images and compositions.

The proposal here is to pay attention to the tensions provoked when these works are placed in dialogue and to the questions that can only arise from this meeting. What bodies are these so vulnerable? Is there an exhaustion in dealing with the image? Is being together the way to claim more female protagonism in spaces dedicated to art? In addition to everything that a close look can provoke.

Agate Collective