(Paris, France)
Right after the electoral period in Brazil, the Ilian Rebei gallery, in France, presents an exhibition bringing together Brazilian artists researching the theme of the body and politics. All the guest artists, from different generations, reflected on their relationship to the political situation in Brazil through the prism of corporeality. “Tu m’ouvres tes bras et on fait un pays” features Allan Weber, Anitta Boa Vida, Anna Bella Geiger, Anna Maria Maiolino, Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, Cinthia Marcelle, Tiago Mata Machado, Iole de Freitas, Jonathas de Andrade, Luísa Brandelli, Lyz Parayzo, Nídia Aranha, Thiago Ortiz, Ventura Profana.
The starting point of the exhibition is the year 1968, a pivotal year in the political history of Brazil. Marked by public demonstrations by students and workers – linking its very history to that of France – it was also the year of AI-5, known as Institutional Act number 5, which served to institutionalize the practices of torture, repression and censorship of generals. This is the fifth of seventeen major decrees issued by the military dictatorship in the years following the 1964 coup in Brazil. Through a wide range of visual strategies employed by the contemporary artists selected for the group show, this curatorial project aims to make the idea of Brazilian art more complex and exciting for the European public.
This exhibition disobeys certain prejudices about Latin American art, by inscribing Brazil in its national history but also by intertwining these aesthetic productions in a broader context: the urgency of the transformation of biopolitical technologies that produce bodies and sexualities, constructed by patriarchal and colonial capitalist history.
“Tu m’ouvres tes bras et on fait un pays”
From October 15th to December 18th, 2022
Galerie Ilian Rebei
50 rue Chapon
75003 Paris