Carnival, Body, and Territory

Upon entering one of the exhibition buildings, three pieces immediately stood out for their exploration of the body-land theme. The first was by Emilia Estrada, an Argentine artist and researcher living in Rio de Janeiro. Her large-scale work Rumores áridos de rumbos húmedos (2022) is part of the artist’s iconographic research on 16th century European maritime expeditions. Estrada seeks to subvert some myths of colonization by mapping waterways, and in this piece, she charts the rivers leading to Ciudad de Los Césares, a mythical city in South America. Also known as the Enchanted City of Patagonia, this place is supposedly located in a valley in the Andes Mountains, somewhere between Chile and Argentina. Legend has it that no conqueror ever accessed this mythical city, thanks to the resistance of Indigenous peoples.

Naomi Shida presented three works that metaphorically and literally wove a discourse on the body and its transitions, evoking the perception of texture. One piece is a flag featuring a trans woman mapped with red embroidery, titled Passagem, o atravessar do corpo (2022). Another work resembled an artist’s book, made of fabric and embroidered in white and red. This piece entitled livro was open with its folded pages exposed, where it was possible to read “Objeto, Corpo, Abjeto,” [Object, Body, Abject] with the letter A in red. Another page read “Transcaminhar” [Transwalking] in red. On another page, two chairs — one red and the other white — accompanied the word “diálogos” [dialogues]. Together, these works suggest that building a body-territory is a collective and organic experience, filled with its own specific tensions and encounters. Naomi Shida “explores the representation of her trans body with Asian ancestry as a way of understanding and affirming this space of physical, affective, and symbolic changes,” according to the gallery.

Marlon de Paula, an artist from Minas Gerais in the Rio Doce Valley region, also focused on the discourse around the body. In his work Como costurar às margens (2020), he metaphorically stitches the rocky erosions of the soil with threads, using land-art interventions with worn clothes donated by the local community. It is well known that Minas Gerais has suffered from mineral exploitation since the beginning of the colonial period in Brazil, and De Paula is dedicated to mending the flaws of this social body.

In 2019, the artist began stitching along the Córrego do Lenheiro, a stream running through the historic city of São João Del Rei, also in Minas Gerais. Since the early 20th century, sewage has been directed into the streambed, which also suffered from landfills, altered the original watercourses, and banks invasions. Thus, his stitches aim to restore the soil eroded by mining and “stitch to create a magical realism for this important watercourse to be noticed,” as he puts it. His focus on highlighting the fissures is, in his own words, “to perform a geographical stitch to soothe the land.”

Embracing the carnival ethics of the Abre Alas exhibition, my analysis method was guided by crossings — by which carnival intersects with contemporary art, body crosses territory, and where I cross all of it.

Rachel Souza is a postdoctoral fellow at PPGAV – UFRJ. She holds a PhD in Sociology from IUPERJ, and a Master’s in Contemporary Art Studies from UFF. Her research explores the intersections of art, visual anthropology, colonial asymmetries, politics, and gender. Founder and member of Mentoria Com Fritas, a research and mentoring laboratory in Visual Arts, she is currently researching Mozambican artist Cassi Namoda.

Translation: Jess de Oliveira.