Poema

2021 - Photography (Photography)

59 x 13 1/4 inches

Lenora de Barros

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Lenora de Barros’s poetics are known for setting in motion an intimate relationship between image and the written word. This was precisely one of the questions raised while producing the photographs that compose Poema , one of de Barros’s first and most iconic visual poems. The work consists of a sequence of six black and white photographs where language acts in a performative movement with the typewriter, forging a connection between word and image. Several of the images in the sequence depict the artist’s tongue being violently devoured by the machine as if it were censoring her speech and voice. The confrontation of the organic with the mechanical gains markedly erotic connotations. A mixture of caress and aggression, sadomasochism and sensuality, the distance in between hints at the gap between speaking and writing. With the intention of making a poem about the creation of poems, de Barros shows the anguish of not being able to put the speech into words. And through this crisis, the organ responsible for our communication is torn apart.

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Lenora de Barros studied linguistics and started her artistic career in the 1970s. The daughter of Geraldo de Barros, a pioneer of concrete art, she grew up with concrete poetry, and began her career as a poet, eventually focusing on bringing together word and image simultaneously. Taking inspiration from James Joyce’s verbi-voco-visual language, de Barros explores language in all its angles—touch, sight, hearing, speech—by combining images and words (a trend that found its development in Brazil in the 1950s). de Barros is able to transition seamlessly between different languages and media, photography, video, installation, and performance, where text always remains a central piece. Her work is in constant dialogue with the materiality of the word, in the context of the questions posed by concrete poetry, while also flirting with conceptual art, pop art and neo-concretism.

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Colors:

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• language.n.01
• picture.n.01
• poem.n.01
• body.n.01
• machine.n.01
• violence.n.01
• monochrome