De sino à sina (From Bell to Fate)

2018 - Installation (Installation)

5:20 minutes (looped)

Carla Zaccagnini

De sino à sina (From Bell to Fate) is a six-channel sound installation by Carla Zaccagnini exploring the relationship between modern Brazil and its colonial past. The sound installation is made from a recording of the bell at Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Brancos, a Baroque-style chapel that is one of the first chapels in Ouro Preto (previously Vila Rica) in the region of Minas Gerais. The work references the execution of José da Silva Xavier (1746-1792), also known as “Tiradentes”. He was a dentist and military officer, and one of the twelve people from Ouro Prieto, in Minas Gerais, who led the first attempt to gain independence from Portugal. Their revolt became known as the movement of the “Inconfidentes”. Accused of conspiring against the Portuguese Crown, Tiradentes was sentenced to the gallows and deprived of his Christian rights, which included burial and the tolling of a bell. He was dismembered instead, and rumor has it that, despite the interdiction, the bell of the Capela de Nossa Senhora do Rosário dos Homens Brancos in Ouro Prieto tolled. In a symbolic political move, that very same bell would sound years later, in 1960, during the inauguration of Brasília, the futurist capital of Brazil, turning Tiradentes, the conspirator, into a national hero. Zaccagnini was compelled by the symbolic sound of the bell, for it resisted the capital punishment of Tiradentes, and it had also uplifted the hopes of modernity in the birth of Brasilia. Additionally, a subtle projection in the bell sound are the hundreds of thousands of indigenous Indian and African slaves who were employed to undertake the physical toil of recovering the gold, an aspect of the Brazilian gold rush that differentiated it from the other prominent rushes. Yet, De sino à sina not only alludes to the evolution of the figures of the slave, the traitor, and the martyr in the formation of Brazilian history and the construction of the nation’s identity. While the story of the bell is deeply and directly connected to the Catholic faith and power, the sudden African rhythms in the work produce a new sound. The work thus explores the influences of African culture that permeated the country with the slave trade and speculates about the way they have infiltrated its white Christian counterpart as a form of resistance. The work responds with utmost sharpness to the need of creating a ritual atmosphere that is not necessarily religious, but that still generates a sense of community.

Carla Zaccagnini combines historical research with a variety of media and techniques. From drawing to installation, performance, text, video, exhibition curating, and written criticism, Zaccagnini investigates cultural exchange and social displacement, as well as the transformation of the symbolic value of images in contemporary culture. Zaccagnini views these multiple activities as mutually constitutive forms of inquiry that overlap to form a holistic, conceptually driven art practice. Often working by recontextualizing existing objects and ideas, she prompts viewers to question the limitations of language and representation, the fallibility of perception, and the construction of knowledge. Zaccagnini is part of a generation of Latin American artists that have addressed the political history of the continent and, more specifically but not exclusively, the history of Brazil. Having delved into the history of slavery, the influence of European aesthetics in Brazilian art, and its assimilation by indigenous cultures, Zaccagnini uses art as a conceptual instrument to undo the construction of history and the production of knowledge.

Colors:

• revolution.n.02
• patriotism.n.01
• resistance.n.01
• ritual.n.01
• colonialism.n.01
• religion.n.01
• bondage.n.02
• brazil
• brazilian