Elilson (Recife, 1991) is an artist, researcher and professor. PhD student in Visual Arts at USP, he holds a master’s degree in Performance Art from UFRJ and a bachelor’s degree in Letras from UFPE. He was a scholarship artist in the EAV Parque Lage (“Formação e Deformação Program”) in 2018. He mainly researches connections between performance art and urban mobility, being interested in relations between orality and writing, power and solidarity, gestures and Histories, among others. He published two books through the Rumos Itaú Cultural program: “Por uma mobilidade performativa” (Editora Temporária, 2017) and “Mobilidade [inter] urbana-performativa” (2019). Since 2016, he has participated in exhibitions and festivals in multiple cities, including: “Mostra Todos os Gêneros” -Itaú Cultural (São Paulo, 2020); “Verbo” – Galeria Vermelho (São Paulo, 2019); “Metrópole Transcultural” – Galpão Bela Maré (Rio de Janeiro, 2019); “Formação e Deformação” – Parque Lage (Rio de Janeiro, 2018), “EDP nas Artes” – Instituto Tomie Ohtake (São Paulo, 2018) and “Temporal” (Asunción, 2017). In 2018, he was awarded the Rumos Itaú Cultural award and the EDP in the Arts award from the Tomie Ohtake Institute, through which he held a residency in R.A.R.O (Buenos Aires, 2019). In 2020, he participated in the residency program at FAAP / SP and was one of the artists selected in the 30th Edition of the Exhibition Program at Centro Cultural São Paulo, making his first solo show: “Movement, polysemic”.
“C(h)ancela 24“, 2020. Duration: 16’00”
“ré Pública: variação oral“, 2018. Duration: 15’21”
“Transporte Olímpico“, 2016/2017. Duration: 7’39”
“Gota – exposição oral 17“, 2018. Duration: 27’38”
“Troncal, uma palestra sobre a palavra no Rio de Janeiro“, 2016. Duration: 13’36”
“Arte Panfletária: exposição oral“, 2019. Duration: 51’07”
About the works
Wearing clothes without prints, I walk in search of pamphlets and pamphlets. I accept all distributed pamphlets, offering one or two safety pins for each worker to decide where on my body their ad should be attached. I return home only when the clothes are fully leaflets. If the clothes are transmuted in discursive installations that record hikes of up to 8 hours, the chronicles written from the performances concatenate the meetings with the pamphlets in conversations that raise issues such as migratory flows, family memories and relationships between power and solidarity . Performance performed between 2018 and 2019 in: Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Recife and Buenos Aires, lasting 5 to 8 hours.
Objects used in performance: cart made of MDF, wood, mirror, fabrics, PVC rods, fixed and rotating casters. Collaborations: Deyvson Oliveira (action). Ney Wallace (carpentry). Performers-collaborators: Bruno Britto, Dara Thayná, Deyvson Oliveira, Dinho Lima Flor, Gervásio Braz, Gustavo Soares, Hayla Cavalcanti, Rafael Silas, Samara Lacerda and Suenne Sotero.
- “Chuva de Direitos”, 2018
In 2018, I threw giant workbooks from the top of buildings in the city of Rio de Janeiro. As the title suggests, it is an action-tribute to “Rain of Money” [1983-1985], by artists Márcia X. and Ana Cavalcanti.
1000 red envelopes were thrown over the course of a day from the top of buildings in Rio de Janeiro. Inside, a metalfilm card with silkscreened student Marcus Vinícius’ phrase and a newspaper copy of the anti-militarist speech given by Márcio Moreira Alves in 1968 mirror the militarized violence between the 50 years that separate these events.
I walk the streets looking for people drinking water or working with water for drop by drop, filling the 13, 6 liters of the red bucket. In one of these collections, I used the 2 hours of water to eliminate the graffiti “good freak is dead freak”, inscribed in a bathroom at UFRJ in commemoration of the murder of student Diego Vieira Machado. The report that records this collection and washing cycle is presented in galleries and cultural centers, when, before the oral exhibition, I repeat the gesture of walking for hours collecting water from passers-by, drinking it and dispatching it in the exhibition space at the end of the exhibition. reading. This is the first in a series of works in which I am interested in investigating the similar linguistic vitality that popular expressions and hate speech have.
In times of intense flow, I used the train or subway services wearing an ox mask in electroluminescent wire, highlighting the corral scenography. I will always face it when I was stared at. I talked only when other passengers started the dialogue.
- “Tri(u)nca Histórica”, 2017
Marching backwards in the counterflow of cars. Screen-printed shirt and flags.
First job in a series of backstreets. Groups of Brazilians and Brazilians, wearing shirts with the inscriptions 2016 [front] and 1964 [back] walked on their backs for up to 3 hours, silently and with their hands splayed down. Start and end points pre-established in line with historical facts). Performers-collaborators: PTI Study Group – Nameless Theater – Ana Paula Penna, André Rodrigues, Andrêas Gatto, Carla Souza, Chris Ayumi, Diogo Liberano, Flávia Naves, Francisco Costa, Gleisse Paixão, Hugo Grativol, Joana Poppe, Lúx Nègre, Márcio Machado, Maria Baderna, Mayara Yamada, Regina Medeiros, Thaís Barros and Virgínia Maria.
Other Performers-collaborators: Ana Kemper, Inês Palmeiro, Jan Macedo, Jojo Rodrigues, Maria Acselrad, Maria Baderna, Maria Luisa Mendes, Maria Palmeiro, Nathália Mello, Otávio Leonidio, Patricia Kirilos Naegale, Renata Caldas, Vanessa Matos and Yanna Bello.
- “Transporte Olímpico”, 2016-2017
I used a stop at the VLT, in RJ, as a gym and bet on races with the train, passing and being overtaken. Collaborations: joint design with Eleonora Fabião; performers-collaborators of the relay version: Andrêas Gatto, Maria Palmeiro and Gunnar Borges.
Flag sewn by train passengers, over 5 hours from wagon to wagon, in tribute to Adílio Cabral dos Santos, street vendor run over by 3 trains in 2015.
With a supermarket trolley containing pillows, mineral water and sunscreen, I paid the fees for public transport in the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Curitiba to those who would have to travel between two subway stations inside the trolley , in addition to authorizing the registration of your images.
“ #PorDentroDoAteliê – Elilson”, 2021. Duration 14’57”
