By Leila Kyomura
Giselle Beiguelman — artist and professor at USP’s School of Architecture and Urbanism — presents two new installations: Monumento Nenhum, at Beco do Pinto, and Chacina da Luz, at Solar da Marquesa de Santos, home to the São Paulo City Museum. The installations reflect on the city’s relationship with the works in its public spaces and discuss the politics of memory and forgetting.
Beiguelman explains why she is bringing art to the heart of the city: “Making an intervention like these two installations relates to the idea of occupying and opening historical channels to other aesthetic and cognitive experiences. We want to encourage people to get to know the city not from inside cars and buses but by walking, reclaiming its heritage not merely through contemplation, but through lived experience.”
Visitors can enjoy both installations free of charge. Additional materials are also available.
“We prepared supporting material: cards like postcards that provide not only visual documentation of the exhibition but information about the history of these sculptures.” The cards are kept in steel drawers, beside a sign instructing visitors: “Open the archives.” The public is free to open them, look, take cards, put them in an envelope and bring them home to share the history and art with anyone interested.
“This is a message that seems strategic to me in the times we are living through. Discussing memory alone is not enough,” Beiguelman reflects. “The issue is opening up and providing access to documents and history. So the call ‘Open the archives’ relates not only to the exhibition’s context but to the country’s overall situation and to issues fundamental to the production of our collective and social forgetting.”
For more information about the installations Monumento Nenhum and Chacina da Luz, visit the project website and follow on social media: Facebook and Instagram
Monumento Nenhum and Chacina da Luz. May 4–September 1, 2019.
Rua Roberto Simonsen 136 São Paulo, SP 01017-020. Tuesday–Sunday: 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
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