PIPA Prize 2016: Recapping the Seventh Edition of the Prize

“Such forward and lasting action by PIPA has been building an essential archive for the exchange of information amongst cultural agents and interested parties that contribute to the comprehension and promotes the diffusion of our art both nationally and internationally.” – Fernando Cocchiarale, Visual Arts Curator of Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio)

PIPA Prize reaches the end of its seventh edition fulfilling its original mission: stimulating the production of Brazilian contemporary art and reinforcing the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio) by presenting an annual show and donating every year four art pieces to the institution, each by one of the PIPA Prize finalists. Since the first edition of the Prize in 2010, almost 30 artworks have entered the MAM-Rio collection, produced by Renata Lucas, Marcelo Moscheta, Cinthia Marcelle, Marcius Galan, Tatiana Blass, Jonathas de Andrade, Eduardo Berliner, André Kotmasu, Matheus Rocha Pitta, Rodrigo Braga, Thiago Rocha Pitta, Berna Reale, Cadu, Camila Soato, Laercio Redondo, Alice Miceli, Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, Thiago Martins de Melo, Wagner Malta Tavares, Virginia de Medeiros, Leticia Ramos, Marina Rheingantz, Cristiano Lendhardt, Clara Ianni, Gustavo Speridião, Luiza Baldan and Paulo Nazareth. Together, the artworks make a broad and significant panorama of Brazilian contemporary art.

Throughout the years, the PIPA Prize website have also gained importance as an online research platform. Its originalities range from the fact that it is written both in Portuguese and in English; its geographical comprehensiveness, including artists from all over the country in opposition to the usual media concentration on the South East; and its precise historical focus, once the nominees tend to be relatively new to the Brazilian art scene. Today, our “pages” section at the website counts with 335 artists, featuring resumés, critical texts and images of their works, as well as at least one video interview with each of them discussing topics such as their creative processes, backgrounds and desires. Our goal is, then, to establish the website as a knowledge reference when it comes to the Brazilian contemporary art scene. The contribution of artists, galleries and the scene itself is absolutely vital for this work to follow up.

Statistics 2016

The 2016 Nominating Committee was composed by 30 art professionals in Brazilian contemporary art, amongst critics, curators, collectors, gallerists, artists and researchers from all over the country and abroad. Nominated by them, 71 artists participated in the seventh edition of the Prize, 45 or almost 60% of them for the first time. Most artists were 31 to 40 years-old, and most were born in South East of Brazil, although an expressive number were born (14%) or resides (10%) abroad.

PIPA & PIPA Popular Vote

“The main prize hopes to highlight and qualify artists whose national and international circulation is somehow consistent, as well as showcasing these artworks in one of the most prestigious art institutions in the country, the Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro” – Luiz Camillo Osorio, curator of PIPA Institute

—PIPA: Main category, in which only the four finalists chosen by the PIPA Board participate. The winner is selected by the Award Jury and receives R$130,000, part of which is used to fund the winner’s participation in an international artist residency programme at Residency Unlimited, in New York.

—PIPA Popular Vote Exhibition: Also exclusive for finalists. This category donates R$ 24,000 to the most voted artist at the Finalists Exhibition at MAM-Rio.

In November 9th, we announced the grand PIPA Prize 2016 winner, Paulo Nazareth. Then competing against the other 2016 finalists, Clara Ianni, Gustavo Speridião and Luiza Baldan, Nazareth was chosen by the 2016 Award Jury (composed by Fernando Cocchiarale, Marisa Flórido, Júlia Rebouças, Milton Machado and Luiz Camillo Osorio) as the rightful recipient of the R$130,000 award, part of which is destined to finance a three months residency programme at Residency Unlimited, in New York. Nazareth was also chosen PIPA Popular Vote winner by the MAM-Rio Finalists Exhibition visitors, receiving R$24,000.

PIPA Online

“PIPA Online aims primarily in giving visibility and promotion to artists whose institutional presence isn’t quite preeminent yet.” – Luiz Camillo Osorio

—PIPA Online is the category in which every artist participating in the edition can take part. The voting happens online and the winner is the most voted by the public. The winner receives R$ 10,000. The runner-up on the online voting receives R$5,000.

The online category of PIPA 2016 happened in two rounds: the first from July 17th to the 24th, and the second from July 31st to August 7th. Out of the 63 participating artists, only 10 were classified for the second round, achieving the minimum amount of 500 votes. In the end, PIPA Online winner and R$10,000 receiver was Jaider Esbell, who raised 3789 votes. The second most voted artist was Arissana Pataxó, who was awarded R$5,000 thanks to her 3686 votes.

This was the first time three indigenous artists (along with Esbell and Pataxó, Isaías Sales also ran) were nominated for PIPA Prize. Watch below the winner’s announcement, where Esbell, from the Amazonian tribe of Macuxi, and Pataxó, who decided to use her tribe as her last name, discuss how PIPA Online managed to help them promote their works.

PIPA Prize Finalists Exhibition

PIPA Prize Finalists Exhibition 2016 took place at MAM-Rio from September 3rd to November 13th and presented artworks by the four finalists of the seventh edition of PIPA Prize: Clara Ianni, Gustavo Speridião, Luiza Baldan and Paulo Nazareth. Selected amongst 71 nominees, they are, according to Luiz Camillo Osorio, “four artists with very assertive, diverse and politically-charged poetics. In a country, and in a world, convulsed by political crises and civilizing challenges, commitment and involvement with the current situation is the least we can expect from art”.

Clara Ianni, whose research for a doctorate in Visual Arts at USP is focused on the relationship between art and politics, shows the video installation “Circle” (2014-2016), featuring a documentary video of a demonstration against the Football World Cup in the streets of São Paulo in 2014. In that context, the police used the Hamburg’s Cauldron technique, controlling the demonstration by training police circular cords that move and push the crowd as to confine it to a certain area. “The idea of the work is to make us think about the shape of the circle and its various applications”, says Ianni.  The artist replicates this circle on the museum’s ground, connecting this time the Hamburg circle to the institutional art space: the circle reminds us of the tapes attached to museum floors indicating the minimum distance from which one can observe a work of art.

Gustavo Speridião‘s works are probably the most explicitly political amongst all items on view at the exhibition. There, he displayed the installation-painting “Fora” (2013), a 6.5-meter canvas clipped on the wall. Filling the pictorial plane, there are words evoking a political demonstration banner or a notebook with political notes. For Speridião, the raw materials of the painting were “tears, blood, sweat, and nankin“.

“Everyone has a very political profile. Perhaps in Baldan’s work that profile is less obvious, but it can be found nevertheless in the way she explores architecture”, comments Osorio on yet another of PIPA Prize 2016 finalists, Luiza Baldan. In the video installation “Perabé” (2014-2015), the artist presents a narrative account of her relationships with the cities she has lived in. “São Paulo was the first city where I lived that is not on the coast. I realized how much I miss the sea in my relationship with the city”. The installation is constituted by a collection of photographs and a text written by the artist, read in four different voices through four separate sound channels, adding to the work an immersive quality.

Baldan also builds a link between hers and the winner of PIPA Prize 2016, Paulo Nazareth: “[his] work seems to be completely different from mine, but both of them share the same idea of wandering, of displacement. Of things that are somehow built through what you pick up and find along the way”.

PIPA Prize and PIPA Popular Vote 2016 winner Paulo Nazareth has been traveling long distances by foot: from the small village of Caiová to New York, from Miami to Mumbai. Amongst several of his curious destinations, the artist exhibited the series “Produtos de genocídio”/”Products of Genocide” (2015-2016), which gathers screen prints, an installation composed of “ready-made” objects and a video. The series reflects on the extermination of indigenous populations and the appropriation of culture as consumer goods. Talking about PIPA Prize Finalists Exhibition as a whole, he observes: “I don’t know how our artworks will talk to each other. At the same time, they are necessarily in a dialogue, because we are all living in the same reality. Each one of us with our own backgrounds and ways to face the current historical times”.

Watch below the PIPA Prize Finalists exhibition being set up and the finalists talking about their own works:

Catalogue 2016

“The up-to-date diffusion of the Brazilian contemporary production promoted by PIPA—by means of a printed catalogue, focused on registering the production of the participants; and of  a bilingual website with international coverage—allows a free access to these publications and to the permanent and updated information on around 300 artists who have taken part in the history of this project.” – Fernando Cocchiarale, Visual Arts Curator of Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro (MAM-Rio)

PIPA Prize catalogs can be downloaded for free in PDF directly here at the PIPA website. All of the edition catalogs are available, from the 2010 to 2016, the latter being 6.9Mb.

The 2016 catalogue contains 211 pages which, in both Portuguese and English, explain the dynamics of the Prize, present each of the seventh edition’s 71 nominees, and discuss and showcase the work of the four 2016 finalists, Clara Ianni, Gustavo Speridião, Luiza Baldan and Paulo Nazareth. There, you can also find critical texts by Luiz Camillo Osorio, curator of PIPA Institute, and Fernando Cocchiarale, curator of MAM-Rio, and by other Board Members. Lastly, the issue also features an evaluation on the Living Area of the PIPA Prize Exhibition 2015 at MAM-Rio, coordinated by Virginia Mota and Jean Diêgo Soares. For more information, click here.

The eighth edition of PIPA Prize officially starts on January 27th, when its Board, Calendar, News and Rules will be announced. Are you ready?