Alegria, uma Invenção
Central Galeria, São Paulo 12 February – 26 March
In a book he wrote in 1928, the Brazilian modernist author Paulo Prado described his country’s supposed melancholic condition. ‘In a radiant land lives a sad folk’, he began Portrait of Brazil, articulating how colonialism and slavery had cast a black shadow on the country’s psyche. The book remains controversial and, as with any attempt to define a national character, inevitably deals in generalisations. Nevertheless, it is arguably still relevant – although as Brazil continues to address its colonial and extractivist history, the sadness Prado pointed towards has probably hardened into anger, especially since the arrival of Jair Bolsonaro on the political scene.
Prado’s text is also the basis for this 25-work group show, according to notes by its curator, Patricia Wagner, which knowingly navigates two clichés: the sad nation and the exoticised Brazil of samba and dancing. As Carnival is once again placed under -19 restrictions (though less severe than last year’s), the street party of Alegria, uma Invenção (Joy, an Invention) emerges here as a cathartic manifestation of both fury and merriment. Guy Veloso’s photograph Zé Pilintra (2017) shows an immaculate, dapper young man, reminiscent of Zé Pilintra, a patron saint-like figure in Afro-brazilian religions, often protecting botecos and other low-fi venues, nonchalantly leaning on a stick while, behind him, flames lick amid the remnants of a street protest. One of the best and strangest inclusions, Nilda Neves’s oil-on-canvas Lampião Faz o Povo Dançar Nu (Lampião Makes People Dance Naked, 2015), depicts a local barn dance, yet one in which everyone is casually naked, carousing on a starry night. All good fun, but there’s an imminent threat standing at the edge: a group of men on horseback with guns. Police? Gangsters? Possibly a mixture of the two, but there’s no doubt that a fight is about to pop. There are cowboys, too, in Vivian Caccuri & Gustavo von Ha’s eight-minute music video Vivian & Gustavo (2020), which sees the artists miming and dancing to a gloriously camp sendup of sertaneja, the ubiquitous, charttopping music of Brazil’s hinterlands and a genre that is both highly lucrative and a bastion of conservative values.
This is an election year in Brazil, and one thing for certain is that it won’t be an easy ride. As such, ¦§§¨©!’s Flora Treme (2016) might come in handy. A metal treelike structure, with pots and pans attached, it’s a machine for panelaços, the pot-banging protests that are both furious and fun. Given the circumstances, however, Felipe Cohen’s Quarta-feira de Cinzas (Ash Wednesday, 2014/22) might be of more use: a granite brick, ripe for throwing, inlaid with carnival confetti. Oliver Basciano