Marcelo Cidade
Marcelo Cidade was born in 1979, São Paulo, Brazil, where he lives and works. Much of Marcelo Cidade’s practice draws from the city of São Paulo, a place he has always lived, developing a dialogue between the artistic legacy of the Brazilian avant-garde and the post-utopian reality of the contemporary city. São Paulo, the largest city of Brazil inhabited by over 20 million people, offers Cidade endless types of encounters as he roams the city finding materials to work with – such as concrete blocks, broken glass, felt blankets used by the homeless, old mattresses, garbage bags, and half-done constructions (gambiarra). Cidade describes his experience working there: “I’m exposed to unimaginable situations, often discovering, accidentally, situations of conflict.” Appropriating and redeploying urban detritus, Cidade engages the systems and structures of city environments, as well as the conflicting processes of development and displacement that shape them. Inherently some of his works reflect local political issues to Brazil, but his work isn’t necessarily a portrait of a particular city, or place, but rather is suggestive of a common desire (not unlike many of Brazilian artists of his generation since the 1970s) to make signs of conflict, and socio-political failures transparent. For his residency at Kadist, Cidade will continue working with materials and situations that resist forms of displacement and constraint. His initial research and reflection will carry out within local communities and the urban environment, while focusing on concepts of counterculture, subversion, transformation and individual freedom – concerns that have always been central to his work when questioning the reality of the contemporary city.