Rafael Adorján

“Give me photos”
by Roberto Conduru

In order to be faithful to the series Religare, one must enter the images and, at the same time, look at them from the outside. Objectivity and subjectivity articulate in the photo shoot taken by Rafael Adorján in the Santo Daime community located in the Vale do Matutu, city of Aiuruoca, Minas Gerais. There was personal motivation, originated in family bonds – the attraction towards the doctrine came as a result of the feeling that his father’s life had been changing as he was getting involved with that religious life. On the other hand, the project became real in 2014 when it got included in the Prêmio Arte e Patrimônio, in the field of cultural heritage as cosmology, as reflection over places, objects, practices and knowledge, viewed as values that are shared collectively from mythical and mystical cult systems.

More than having to decide among joining religious rites or not, or which observation and analysis method of the social sciences to be used, for the accomplishment of the project, it was necessary to transit through universes, facing limits, peculiarities, overlaps, interchanges. Dynamics that is far from uncertainty. As suggested by the epigraph, chosen from the book of hymns transmitted by Mestre Irineu, founder of the doctrine, all it takes is “Firmness of thinking / To keep in the right path”.

A firm path that is nothing obvious though. It was necessary; in order to immerge into the environment, to live with the community, follow some of the works that constitute the religious routine: communions, festivities and even the preparation of the Ayahuasca, the doctrine’s fundamental beverage. According to the commandments of the Santo Daime, the discipline aimed for deep, intense experience, even though it had happened for short periods of time and in sort of stages.

Nevertheless, it must be highlighted that, although distant from the ethnographic report and close to the journal, the photo series is even closer to a field diary than to intimate writing. But let me be even clearer: if the field in question has shown itself full of values and senses, action mode is purely artistic. Having as challenges the creation of a totally different look, both external and internal, and the fact of not using just photography as a tool to frame that world, making the experience in that universe a way of going deep in the image as a matter of reflection. Not by chance, the epigraph brings the image of the path that leads to the idea of life, this life being religious or not, but being mainly a learning process. This idea is corroborated by the following verses: “Though I don’t learn a lot / I always learn a tiny bit”.

An indication of photographic deepening is contraposing images, at first documental, to others, apparently, more aestheticized, operating with many different kinds of functionality, as well as with many different levels of autonomy of the images in relation to the series. These differences were unfolded in such peculiar ways of materializing themselves in exhibition spaces and a book. Groups of images that, in its several sequences, disposition and rhythm show an experience that cannot at all be described as either linear or homogeneous, although in its daily routine, it is indeed repetitive.

It is noticeable the intention of fully introducing the community, its spaces, elements and practices. As a whole it is possible to see the vale do Matutu, some houses, a school, the places used in the celebrations and the preparation of the Ayahuasca, among other buildings. The highlight goes to the plants with which the beverage is prepared; as well as the symbols of the Santo Daime and some of its books of hymns. Even if most of the images do not show any people, they do express the feeling of an inhabited place. Human presence does not lack: transformed nature, manufactured and used things. Some photos show prospects and objects with images of divine entities (Jesus Christ and Our Lady of Immaculate Conception), historical figures of the doctrine (Mestre Irineu and Padrinho Sebastião) and members of the community. There are also exceptions, in which, some bodies are partially shown or are presented merely as shapes in crucial moments of the preparation of the Ayahuasca or the festivities.

The intention of this set is not to totalize, however. Rafael Adorján has shed a light on a very particular whole, composed by contraposed, panoramic views, and specific details of elements, decisive stages of the religious practice, also spaces, things and moments that may seem insignificant, trivial or fortuitous at first. The images are fruit of his own choice, for sure, according to what he had the permission to watch and register. Still, the subjective dimension of this experience is much more complex than that, it is fully affected by the doctrine of the Santo Daime itself, in which everything converges to self-knowledge, to reflections that lead to a connection of full harmony with oneself, collectivity and the whole universe.

In this sense, the images in Religare are his “mirações”, as Mestre Irineu called the sights one usually experiences after having the Ayahuasca. Seen in connection to the world, but mainly turned to our inside. The elaborated narrative in the photo editing tries to make the doctrine more comprehensible, its history and daily routine, but also expresses how he lived this life in the Matutu and how the experience got to him, including his photographic grasp. The horizontal format, chosen in the artistic repertory of the landscape representation, passes on the sense of serenity, integration and harmony that he felt for sure. In the Santo Daime, a person chooses to enter the doctrine in order to reap gifts. In Religare, Rafael Adorján shows us that, in photography, what matters is more than that decisive moment of visual capture of singular moments, is the preparation process to receive images as presents from the world.

English translation by Alice Perini

“MSV432”
by Luisa Duarte

The artist’s task was not a simple one. How to impart perenniality, singularity, to a process that foresaw the construction of a political narrative of a house undergoing restoration? How to take this proposal – a desire of third parties – and make it something of his own? Rafael Adorján came up with a wise response to these questions. From the moment he agreed to take up the task, which foresaw the making of a photographic essay on the changes in the “little house” that was to become the new facilities of Galeria da Gávea, up to the moment that this book was being finished, Adorján knew how to bring a personal approach to a project which in other hands could have easily become distant and bureaucratic.

Since the outset it was clear to everyone involved that this was not about recording a “before and after,” that is, a house in a state of dereliction that was then totally restored. The idea was rather for the photographer to know how to infiltrate himself into the flow of the changes of a property constructed in 1881 at the end of the street called Marques de São Vicente, in the district of Gávea, in Rio de Janeiro’s south zone, and officially designated in the 1980s as a cultural heritage site. To this end, the artist undertook a routine of bimonthly visits throughout one year, between May 2016 and May 2017. Seeking to enter as discreetly and silently as possible, Adorján approached that previously unknown environment. Using both digital and analog photography, video and collages in the form of notes written in a notebook that sometimes served as a diary, the artist managed to achieve what to me always seemed to be the most challenging aspect of this project: imparting a personal and singular character to what was proposed to him by third parties, in a way that took the experience of recording the restoration of the “little house” and brought it into his own territory of questionings.

Between the image that opens the book, showing the huge, intact boulders that existed in the house’s basement, and the one that closes it, of the façade still in transformation, what we see is a gaze dedicated to observing and valorizing what is commonly fated to be born, to live and to die in obscurity. We live in an era that gives constant praise to the result, to productivity. The omnipresence of the word “focus” in our daily life reveals the obsession for the correct path, straight and without distractions. In this mindset, the important thing is to move forward, avoiding detours, and to be able to show the world the result of this journey. Always revealing the happy, successful face of the path taken. A look at any Instagram account is enough to readily prove this. Entering a house undergoing restoration is to inhabit
a gap where everything is still in a state of disorder. A continuously changing hiatus. Between the conception of the project and its completion, what exists is trial and error, a series of hits and misses. Among stones, cement, bricks, scaffolding, rubble, tools, and pieces of workers’ clothing, Adorján bore witness to the collective efforts to leverage an age-old preexistence, lending it perenniality.

But before this, before the inauguration, before the opening, there is a time destined for anonymity. It is precisely this time that we find in Adorján’s photos. A time experienced chronologically, but shown labyrinthically. Because, between the stones that dwelled in the basement and the façade that links interior to exterior, the way that the artist moves through the space breaks down any hierarchy or attempt at linearity. Rather, it is a spinning in circles within a space of straight lines. A gaze that lingers on that which is pure transit, while attentively exploring an architecture underway. Amidst the noise of the construction, the quietness of the photographer stands out. Adorján inhabited that space at his own pace, which ran opposite to that of the restoration works and that of the hectic and haste-driven existence of our daily lives. In other words, in the apparent banality of the act of recording a house in mutation, there are countless tiny gestures which subvert various imperative aspects of an era that aims to be fast and efficient. A time that seems to give importance only to what arises in an aseptic and well-finished way. Today, everything that is brought before the public is expected to be edited and Photoshopped. On the other hand, what the images of MSV432 convey to us is life in its raw state, at the moment of that inner and silent weaving which is essential for anything to come into the world. Moreover, while everyone at a worksite needs a clear aim, to finish it, to arrive at the result and deliver it, heading toward the next step, Adorján was interested in the exercise of stopping, knowing how to dwell in the present instead of immediately imagining what is to come. Above all, he was not afraid of “wasting time,” not wishing to gain time, but rather to relearn the patience of looking.

“Whoever seeks to form an impression of historical time in everyday life should notice the wrinkles of an old man, or the scars in which a former fate is preserved. Or, the conjunction of ruins and rebuilt sites can be recalled, noting the obvious shifts in style that lend a profound temporal dimension to a simple house row.”¹ This passage by Reinhart Koselleck is relevant here for linking a simple house row, between a conjunction of ruins and rebuilt sites, to a larger time frame. And isn’t that just what we see in MSV432? Between the house in a state of dereliction and the finished gallery, there is an interval that inspires us to think about entirely novel forms of resistance, subtle twists that can contain an unsuspected political content. At this point, it is important to underscore that the commission extended to Adorján involved a gamble. By hiring an artist and giving him carte blanche to record its new facilities, however he saw fit, the gallery was betting its chips on a process whose outcome was always, for everyone, an unknown. This simple gesture contains the trace of a valuable bet. In a text written in the 1990s concerning the uncomfortable situation of philosophy in the contemporary world, philosopher Alain Badiou stated: “our world does not like gambling, randomness, risk or engagement. It is a world obsessed with safety, a world where a person should, as soon as possible, calculate and protect his future. A world where chance is dangerous. A world where we should not abandon ourselves to the encounters.”² In its on way, MSV432 affirms the artist as someone who blazes a territory in which the element of gambling is preserved.

We know that the cartography of ruin, of rubble, has become one of the main themes of countless contemporary artists since the beginning of the 21st century. Even though the debate that unleashes this sort of visuality is not present in MSV432, there was a danger that the work, even unintentionally, could be associated with this sort of aestheticized, mannerist visuality. But the restraint with which Adorján captured the house in mutation gives rise to a sort of ethical boundary, through which we do not see in these images any attempt at forcibly aestheticizing the prevailing noise.

If the photos instate a sort of discreet silence amidst the cacophony that characterizes a work in its real face, the video presented in the exhibition, also entitled MSV432, bears another temporality and another volume present in the work in process. In long takes shot by a fixed camera, Adorján records the coming and going of workers and reveals a noisier dimension of the process in play. The photo-book that we have in hand does not contain still frames from the video, as this publication never aimed to be an exhibition catalog. I nevertheless deem it important to call attention to the role of this work within the overall poetical fabric woven by Adorján.

If we go to the dictionary, the first definition of the word “work” that we will find is “that which results from an effort, an action.” That is, a fundamental part of every work lies in those people who bring it about. If, in the photographs of MSV432, these men appear subtly, in the video we see a striking presence of the workers and their continuous and repetitive actions – as though the movement proper to this language were necessary to capture the place of these individuals fundamental to the construction of the future gallery in an integral way, and therefore with less risk of falling into the danger of aestheticizing. Throughout the video we witness the duration and density of the work. They are raw images, made with a fixed camera, which respect the delay, the tiredness, the effort of each action carried out there.

From Walter Benjamin we learn that every monument of culture results from the efforts of an anonymous multitude. Carrying out research for one year on a worksite, while completely silencing the presence of the workers, would have slightingly disregarded a part of the process, in keeping with the cruel situation pointed out by the Jewish philosopher. And although by paying attention to them we do not modify this fact, the artist’s gaze does dispel the total invisibility to which they are always condemned. In Adorján’s images there is a rawness and a sort of fair distance that portrays the workers without tricks, without falsely implying an inexistent greater proximity. There is no populism or demagoguery here. The balance found by Adorján is ultimately revealed to be a careful one, delicately supportive of his discretion.

The artist’s dialogue throughout the 12 months of visits to 432 Marques de São Vicente took place, above all, with the inanimate world that exists there: the walls, the cement, the tools, the scaffolding, the construction fences, the stones, but always knowing that “the houses are of people who were made by people and who have within them the possibility of making people.”³ MSV432 thus constitutes a gesture that inaugurates a new space dedicated to art, underscoring the capacity of photography and the moving picture to be not only depositories of a memory, but producers of active meanings that point toward the future. I hope that the sense gambling, of risk, of the possibility of giving attention to that which appears to be a mere hiatus between past and future, present in the photo essay made by Rafael Adorján, will guide the path of this place that has now come into the world. Always remembering that art, like houses, is made of people and contains the chance to make people. In other words, rather than being mere merchandise, artistic gestures are poetic acts addressed to the world, able to change the way we see the time in which we dwell and, at the same stroke, who knows, transform it into a place closer to what we imagine when we hear the word “house.”

¹ Reinhart Koselleck. Futuro passado: contribuição à semântica dos tempos históricos. Rio de Janeiro: Contraponto/Editora PUC-Rio, 2006, p. 13.
² Alain Badiou. Para uma nova teoria do sujeito. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará, 1994, p. 13.
³ Matilde Campilho. Jóquei. São Paulo: Editora 34, p. 116.