Place of passage
On April 20 at 3 p.m., the artist Rodrigo Bueno and the curator Gabriel Bogossian will take visitors for a tour focusing on the points of contact between the narratives on the exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno [I will take nothing when I die, those who owe me, I will charge in hell] and the history of Vila Leopoldina neighborhood, where Galpão VB is located. Admission is free and prior registration is not needed.
Bueno is responsible for the site-specific Emboaçava (lugar de passagem) [Emboaçava (place of passage)], the only work commissioned for the exhibition. Using iron bars from demolished houses and varied examples of São Paulo’s flora, the artist brings to Galpão VB a fragment of his studio Mata Adentro, located in the Lapa neighborhood, near Vila Leopoldina.
Both neighborhoods are part of the region which in colonial times was called Emboaçava. According to the engineer and geographer Teodoro Sampaio in the book O tupi na geografia nacional (Tupi in the national geography, 1901), the word means “action of crossing, passage” and designated “a place, on the banks of the Tietê River, adjacent to São Paulo, where the river met the road to the sertão and where a fort or a trench was built to protect the city in the 16th century.” The fort was erected to prevent the indigenous people from crossing, protecting the Portuguese invaders against the natives. The colonizers, therefore, usurped the Tupi word while corrupting the role of the place to which it referred.
Stories like this, of invasions, interdictions and disappearances are all over Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno, which seeks to conduct a kind of ethnography of the victims of economic development. Thus, Emboaçava (lugar de passagem) established a dialogue with other works in the exhibition, creating a space that attempts to make the original peoples present. In Rodrigo Bueno’s site-specific, what we see are residues and specters of such presence.
FACT SHEET
WHAT: “Activation of Rodrigo Bueno’s Emboaçava (lugar de passagem),” with Rodrigo Bueno and Gabriel Bogossian. Public program of the exhibition Nada levarei quando morrer, aqueles que me devem cobrarei no inferno
WHEN: May 20, Saturday, at 3 p.m.
WHERE: Galpão VB | Associação Cultural Videobrasil (Av. Imperatriz Leopoldina, 1150, São Paulo, SP)
Free admission