3:16 minutes
Yo también soy humo (I am also smoke) is a 16mm film that has been digitized to video. It features a single shot of a vintage postcard depicting the Columbus Monument and the port of Barcelona, both of which are linked to colonial histories and historical trajectories. The sea is an unnaturally bright blue. In the foreground, the tram cars are painted in an unusually saturated shade of red. A crease in the postcard’s paper runs through the sky like a shadow, mocking the enduring certainty of Columbus’ gesture of dramatically pointing out toward the “New World.” In the film, Lagomarsino’s father tells a story about arriving in Europe from Argentina after being forced into exile by the illegal military regime that killed and disappeared thousands of Argentineans between 1976 and 1983 on a voiceover in measured, rhythmic Spanish. He sat on a suitcase, lit a cigarette, and resolved to forget about Argentina and all the fear and death he, his wife, and their young daughter had left behind. For the duration of a cigarette, it is a nostalgic, dispirited retelling of displacement. The work confronts the audience with this reality as it is linked to exile and to the loss of belonging and security. It captures the feeling of relief that comes with arriving after a long and uncertain journey and breathing the air of a foreign city for the first time in a place where you know you’ll have to survive.
Runo Lagomarsino’s installations, sculptures, and films provide alternative perspectives on historical, political, and cultural power dynamics. His work, which is concerned with how power relations have manifested in colonial contexts, calls hegemonic versions of history into question, particularly in South America. As a result, he frequently deviates from the images generated by these histories to displace and transform them. On the other hand, the artist does not seek to tell other stories, reveal hidden truths, or create new historical narratives from a colonized perspective. Instead, it aims to rewrite the same stories, exposing contradictory dependencies and complex political dynamics.
On Fire by Runo Lagomarsino comprises twenty pieces of parchment, each of which has had the contours and map of Brazil burned in stages...
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In Fordlândia Fieldwork (2012), Tossin documents the remains of Henry Ford’s rubber enterprise Fordlândia, built in 1928 in the Brazilian Amazon to export cultivated rubber for the booming automobile industry...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
Memory: Record/Erase is a stop-motion animation by Nalini Malani based on ‘The Job,’ a short story by celebrated German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht...
His Deck Painting I recalls the simplistic stripes of conceptual artist Daniel Buren, or the minimal lines of twentieth century abstract painting, but is in reality a readymade, fashioned from repurposed fabric of deck chairs...
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...
Relying on repetition and repurposed materials, Soares works to interrogate time—its measurement, its passing, and its meaning...
Calle’s drawings all inhabit received forms but alter them to call attention to specific qualities...
War Footage is a series of wall-mounted works composed of 16mm film leader, tightly bound to flag-shaped panels by the artist...
With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...
Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...
Drawn from the widely circulated images of protests around the world in support of women rights and racial equality, the phrase I can’t believe we are still protesting is both the title of Wong Wai Yin’s photographic series and a reference to similar messages seen on protest signages...
In Laissez-Faire (Rainbow Flag) da Cunha has turned a beach towel into both a painting and a flag...
Glaze (Savana) (2005) is an assemblage of found materials: a car wheel, a tire, and a wooden plinth of the type traditionally used to display sculpture...
Meireles, whose work often involves sound, refers to Sal Sem Carne (Salt Without Meat) as a “sound sculpture.” The printed images and sounds recorded on this vinyl record and it’s lithographed sleeve describe the massacre of the Krahó people of Brazil...