FARSA. LANGUAGE, FRACTURE AND FICTION: BRAZIL - PORTUGAL

Sesc Pompeia presents FARSA, curated by Marta Mestre and with adjunct curatorship by Pollyana Quintella. Referring to the universe of language, works produced in Brazil and Portugal by contemporary visual artists are exposed. The institution, when carrying out such activity, reaffirms the importance of knowing the influences of different ethnicities and communities in the historical and cultural formation of a country, understanding the plurality of references in the constitution of identities.

FARSA. LANGUAGE, FRACTURE AND FICTION: BRAZIL - PORTUGAL

Between the physical space of the Sesc Pompeia warehouse and the virtual platform, in which the usual exhibition formats are challenged by new forms of communication, FARSA reiterates a double presence and its inevitable paradoxes. Interestingly, previous meanings have been transformed by the radical experience of the present, and many works brought together by the curatorial scope have gained new layers of meaning. If before we talked about certain limits of language and communication, the discussion now runs through other prisms.

Presenting works by more than 50 artists, the show investigates the supposed linguistic unity of the two countries, counterposing various strategies for the deconstruction of art in both, through experimental works from the 1960s and ’70s, as well as proposals by contemporary artists. As an interplay of questions and answers, the exhibition tensions the idea of an open history and interrogates the “colonial unconscious” of that which is culturally divided and fragmented.

 

The exhibition is anchored in three curatorial sections. The first, titled “Glu, Glu, Glu” features works that approach the idea of langue and language as a deconstruction machine. Thus, as a voracious mechanism for the swallowing and excretion of meanings, it does not bring discourse into the fore, but rather fragments and slices of reality, expressive in words and bodies.

 

The second section, “Outras galáxias” [Other Galaxies] evokes the dystopian turning point in the 1960s and 1970s, in literature and in the visual arts, which exposed the destructive power of humanity and the planet in order to emphasize the urgent need to plan faraway futures through science fiction and ecology.

For its part, the third curatorial section, “Palavras mil” [A Thousand Words], presents works that deal with poetry and revolution, many of them having to do with the transition between dictatorship and democracy in Portugal and Brazil. They approach the political, intimate and collective gesture through the written or performed manifesto, through the visuality of the social struggles, or through the desirous sounds of the streets.