{"id":2676,"date":"2013-11-14T16:09:02","date_gmt":"2013-11-14T16:09:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2013-11-14T16:09:19","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T16:09:19","slug":"contemporary-art-brazil-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.archive.raulmourao.com\/blog\/?p=2676","title":{"rendered":"Contemporary Art Brazil"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nas boas livrarias de Ramos e tamb\u00e9m no site da Thames & Hudson.<\/a><\/p>\n

\"contemporary_art_brazil\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Raul Mour\u00e3o\u2019s involvement with art goes far beyond his own practice, which encompasses\u00a0sculpture, installation, drawing, video, photography and performance. He constantly seeks new\u00a0platforms for engaging with audiences in the arts, be it through editing, curating, writing or opening\u00a0his studio to discussion groups. Born in Rio in 1967, he studied\u00a0open courses at EAV (Escola de Artes Visuais do Parque Lage)\u00a0in Rio.<\/p>\n

Largely inspired by sports and other events in the public arena, Mour\u00e3o has pursued two\u00a0distinct narratives, one closer to fiction and the other more documentary in nature. In Seven Artists\u00a0(1995) and Artists (2003) he hanged fellow artists with climbing equipment on the wall of\u00a0exhibition spaces. By employing humour and irony as strategies, these works deal with notions of\u00a0sculpture, performance and display in turn. The documentation of both happenings was later turned\u00a0into videos. A similar use of humour and irony can be seen in the series Luladepel\u00facia (2005),\u00a0which can be roughly translated as \u2018Plush Lula\u2019. Consisting of miniaturised teddy-bear\u00a0reproductions of Brazil\u2019s popular former president Luiz In\u00e1cio Lula da Silva, the piece appeared\u00a0after a major corruption scandal engulfed his government. Here Mour\u00e3o was confronting a\u00a0sentimental image of the president with the corrupted one being propagated by the media of the\u00a0time. Not surprisingly, his work was interpreted as both critical and adulatory.<\/p>\n

The increasing presence of security grilles in Brazil beginning in the 1980s has been the\u00a0starting point for many of Mour\u00e3o\u2019s works. In 1988, he began photographing the grids protecting\u00a0Rio\u2019s air conditioners and trees. In the mid-1990s, he started to reproduce those grates, developing\u00a0works such as House\/Tree\/Street (1996), in which he surrounded a tree with a house-shaped iron\u00a0structure, or Another Thing (2003), a site-specific installation exhibited at the Museu Vale do Rio\u00a0Doce in Esp\u00edrito Santo. The latter piece consisted of a series of grid structures with some of which\u00a0visitors were encouraged to interact, thus experiencing the feeling of being both behind bars and\u00a0outside of them. Around 2009, having been invited by the theatre company Intr\u00e9pida Trupe to\u00a0design some sets, Mour\u00e3o started his Balances series, a further development of the grid theme. Here\u00a0the bars are kinetic, allowing viewers to set them in motion, thus creating myriad new presentations\u00a0while expanding notions of inside and outside.<\/p>\n