Seja marginal, seja herói brings together, for the first time in France, fourteen Brazilian artists and hi- ghlights the diversity of this very dynamic scene. On the occasion of the Year of France in Brazil, three of the invited artists will stay in residency this summer at the Cité Internationale des Arts, thanks to the support of CulturesFrance.
In showing these artists, our aim is not to present a coherent and thorough panorama of the Brazilian scene. On the contrary, our intention is to exhibit a scattered sample in order to reflect the diversity of this scene. This diversity is expressed in the specific and original approaches adopted by each artist: whether it be the organic machines of Mariana Manhães or the trespassive art of Marcelo Cidade, the vanitas of Marco Paulo Rolla or the wicker-basket bicycles of Jarbas Lopes, from the painful meditations of Mauricio Ianês to the scavenging horses of Matheus Rocha Pitta, from the luminous paintings of Luiz Zerbini to the playful children’s games of Sara Ramo, from the discrete architectonic interventions by André Komatsu to the gigantic recycled-wood structures by Henrique Oliveira, from questions of identity raised by Dias & Riedweg to the carnival masks of Laura Lima, or the never-quite-domesticated nature of Thiago Rocha Pitta.
There is no school, group, or motto.
This may come as a disappointment to the curious amateur in their search for an emergent Brazilian ‘scene’, in the traditional sense of the word. Artistic production in Brazil, unlike China and India, has always had close ties to European aesthetical forms and is thus considered, in relation to other contem- porary art scenes, to be a ‘false’ emergent scene. ‘False’ because its re-emergence is brought about only by our interest in this highly-developed and time-honored scene. Conceptual couplings such as developed / emergent, old / new and central / marginal do not apply here. This art scene is just another art scene on another continent; it is an ancient, complex, intense and a wide-reaching scene.
Diversity is the quintessence of contemporary art production in Brazil. Not only through artistic approach but also in geographic origin (Rio, São Paulo, Minas Gerais) and accross generations- Luiz Zerbini is one of the members of Geraçao 80, André Komatsu is part of a new generation of young artists from São Paulo. And it is this same diversity that has allowed us to bring together three galleries as different from each other as Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Galerie Vallois Sculpture and Galerie Georges-Philippe et Nathalie Vallois.
The convocation of fourteen artists under the 1968 mandate Seja marginal, seja herói (Be marginal, be a hero) by Helio Oiticica bestows to this unique and seemingly infinite diversity, an element of order and to this effervescence, a will to be separate and distinct.
Seja marginal, seja herói. Margins are at the center.
In 1984, a show in Rio de Janeiro at Parque Lage grouped together 123 artists emblematic of what would become Geraçao 80. In 1985, military dictatorship in Brazil came to an end, and with it came attempts at authoritarianism, neo-liberalism, and social democracy, all carried out within a democratic context discerned by increasing openness to the outside world and freedom of speech. Under these conditions, the Brazilian scene was profoundly transformed. If our show were to have an objective, then it would be to reunite, 25 years after the Geraçao 80, the members of a scene spanning the past three decades with new directions in the Brazilian scene. Each direction sketches out its path just before ano- ther appears, forming a labyrinth where the viewer is invited to get lost and lose all landmarks- wherein the margins are put in their place- that is to say, in the heart, where the only true heroism resides