TAGS

artist, mauricio-ianes, square.

BIOGRAPHY

Maurício Ianês was born in Santos, Brazil, 1973. Lives in São Paulo 2008 Looks Conceptual, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo 2007 Tropical Punk, Whitechapel Gallery, London 2006 A Long Silence, Sequences Art Festival, Reykjavík, Iceland; Mensageiro, Galeria Vermelho, São Paulo.

INTERVIEW

Cristiana Tejo: The issue of communicability / incommunicability is recurrent in your work. It is no accident that this is an issue of fundamental importance in today’s world. Was this discussion your convocation to art?

Maurício Ianês: The question of communicability or lack thereof has always been important in my work, because I have always seen artistic creation as a dialogue with the audience, or at least as an attempt at dialogue, sometimes frustrated, where important power games, questions of language and semiotics, and political and social issues are at play, and also, perhaps even more importantly than the issues I have just described, personal and emotional questions, private languages. I don’t, however, consider this my “convocation” or “calling” to art (I find the use of the word “calling” interesting because of its religious overtones). In the beginning, art was, for me, a way of expressing myself when verbal language was not enough. Later, when I was more mature, I realized that artistic language also had structures similar to verbal language, its own grammar, a rhetoric of imagery, which could be as flawed as that of language, and I began to consciously examine the issue.

Cristiana Tejo: In the two works presented for the 28th Bienal de São Paulo, the body plays a central role. In the work Sem Título [Untitled] (Silence Area / Monologue Area / Dialogue Area) the body is latency, since the demarcation of zones of communication and solitude seems to beg the performativity of an audience / other. The Kindness of is an ethical appeal to conserve its body, as its survival depends on the visitors. How would you contextualize your work in the panorama of 21st-century body art?

Maurício Ianês: Although the two works I am presenting at the 28th Bienal de São Paulo are undeniably “body art” from one point of view, I prefer to think about them in terms of the audience’s relationship with the art. My creative process rarely starts with an organic, bodily question; rather, it is “thinking about and with the other.” I think this broadens the possibilities of my work and art in general, and I believe that this is a very pressing issue in the contemporary world as a whole, and art cannot turn its back on it. I have a certain personal urgency to establish a commitment with the audience to “be there,” to “be present” before a work of art, and I think “body art,” in its “immediacy,” is important in this work, because the audience is faced with the artist, human being with human being, without mediation – except the mediation of the artistic and cultural context in which the works are presented. I believe that it is precisely in thinking about this non-neutral, unmediated environment that the arts of the body have developed.

Cristiana Tejo: You have a double involvement in the world of culture. You work in both the fine arts and fashion. Are there interfaces between these two activities or do you consider them distinct worlds?

Maurício Ianês: Without any doubt, my thinking is very similar in the creative process in both areas, especially because both involve the body and communication as central objects of analysis (the language of apparel, the language of the body, the language of art). I approach these two areas in very different ways, however, because they each have their specificities. But there is a strong interface that has to do with the techniques used in the works, as well as a very important topic in the fashion world, which has to do with masks, costumes, the artificiality of it all, dressing for others, hiding behind the language of apparel. This potency inherent in the fashion world has had a significant influence on certain issues in my work.


Cristiana Tejo is an independent curator and director of the Museu de Arte Moderna Aloísio Magalhães (mamam), in Recife, since January 2007.

PROJECTS - 28TH SAO PAULO BIENAL

Projects with updated content