Hal Wildson - Re-Utopya" exhibition

Galeria Movimento presents the exhibition

"Hal Wildson - Re-Utopya"

Known primarily for his work with images created from an extreme typing, the artist and and poet investigates the history of Brazil, where memory, forgetfulness, identity and are his tools for thinking about a possible future for the country, and for the for the Brazilian people, "still in formation". This first major individual exhibition of the artist, born in 1991 in Vale do Araguaia, a frontier region between Goiás and Mato Grosso, and currently living in São Paulo, will bring together his his recent, unpublished work, in various media. National symbols, typewriter, digital typewriter, digital, first historical records of the Brazilian people are used in this critical process that makes up his poetics.

Movimento Gallery, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro

Opening: 9th June 2022, from 18h to 21h

Until: 30 July 2022

Critical text: Divino Sobral

Free entry

Support: Becks

A Movement Gallery presents from 9 June 2022, from 18h to 21h, the exhibition "Re-Utopya", with recent and unpublished works by the artist Hal Wildsonborn in 1991 in Vale do Araguaia, a border region between Goiás and Mato Grosso, and currently living in São Paulo. The exhibition is accompanied by a critical text by the curator Divino Sobral.

Although this is Hal Wildson's first solo show, his work may already sound somehow familiar to the general public. His work "Republic of Inequality - Meritocracy be praised" (2018-2020) was seen on the national network at the opening of the special documentary "Mothers of Brazil, produced by Favela Filmes and KondZilla Filmes, directed by Kelly Castilho and John Oliveira, and shown by Globo in December. In that work, images from national archives of Brazilian workers and records of the artist's childhood are embodied in notes of "zero real". "real zero" notes.

And a poetic video of him, made during the process of creating the work "Singularities" (2020/2022), viralized, and reached the mark of more than five million views on Instagram, being shared also by artists artists, such as Vik Muniz. The video posted on his page was accompanied by a short text: "There is in us a Brazil that is worth believing in! We are a people who are born and meet in the in the mismatch of its multiplicities, that goes beyond time in the process of building and making itself. There are in us many of us, Brasis under construction and reconstruction and reconstruction, and it is because I believe that I make my art a seed of hope, a hammer that breaks, a brick that builds. Singularity, Brazil, identity". "It was surprising," comments Hal Wildson, "because people from many countries connected with the poetry of the work. Each one in his own place, but everyone everyone feels something. I'm talking about being human, about our origin".

The work "Singularities" will be at the exhibition. It consists of 441 digital of the artist in full size, collected in the studio, in the marks left during the production of the work. And each digital mixes with a register history of the Brazilian people - mestizos, like the artist himself, indigenous, blacks - from national archives, collected on the internet. "They are portraits of Brazil's identity of Brazil that help us look at our history," he says. "This This work arises from this will, this desire to understand where the brazilian people are going. In times of crisis - health crisis crisis, crisis in democracy, institutional crisis, crisis of symbols - how to rebuild Brazil if the people themselves no longer recognises itself? If the people themselves do not know that there is the possibility of a future? a future?"he asks.

NINGUENDUM AND NINGUENTHING

The artist's inseparable companion for two years is the book "O povo people: a formation and the meaning of Brazil"(Companhia das Letras, 1995), by Darcy Ribeiro (1922-1997). "This work is anchored in this book, and has some of the desire to rescue the desire of what it is to be a Brazilian people, this people still in training, "says Wildson. He created the expression "ninguentude", from the term coined by Darcy in the book - ninguendade - , the quality of the primordial Brazilian, son of European father European father and indigenous mother. "This first Brazilian had no father and no mother", explains Wildson. "According to the culture of the original peoples, the one who should take care of the father, who was in Europe and thought that the mother would be responsible. responsible. This first Brazilian was born without knowing who he was, on the margin of being someone and being someone and being nobody. He was neither indigenous nor European. A being in formation". At fourteen, when his grandmother who raised him died, Hal Wildson saw that "I had to turn around and study, to get rid of this idea of being fated to be nobody, this fate. "In this my story and Darcy Ribeiro's critical view of the history and formation of formation of Brazil meet: 'how can a child without a father and mother be someone and flee from ninguendade. Thus was also the 'first Brazilian': son of 'nobody', fruit of violence", he says. "The understanding of ninguendade and the search for identity, through these documents that delimit our history, mark my individual "The understanding of ninguendade and the search for identity, through these documents that delimit our history, mark my individual journey artistic research to the extent that art becomes a plan of rewriting and writing of history and retaking of identity to exist-resisting 'ninguentude'".

RE-UTOPYA

A photograph of a child wrapped the Brazilian flag in satin which reads "Re-Utopya" embroidered in the centre, instead of "Order and Progress", welcomes the visitor to the the visitor to the exhibition. With 100 x 67 cm, the work "Re-Utopya - Road to Pindorama" (2021), will have part of the value of its sale reverted to the village Rio Silveiraethnicity Guarani Mbyáin São Sebastião, on the coast of coast of São Paulo. It was there that the photograph was made, and where the artist had the idea of "Re-Utopya"which appeared to him in a dream appeared to him in a dream, and runs through all his recent production.

"I created the flag Re-Utopya, in satin, and I took them there to photograph. Not because they were indigenous, but because it was the family that welcomed me at that moment. The family I wanted to project this future of BrazilThe godmother and godfather were making clay dough to touch up the wall. It was a calm day tranquil day, a tranquil life, dignified, planting, harvesting. I wanted this feeling. As the idea came about there, I wanted to make the first pictures there", explains Hal Wildson.

In early 2020 he moved to San Sebastian, and then was surprised by the pandemic. There he came into contact with the Rio Silveira village, taking bringing support and food to indigenous families, together with the Brotar Network. Fruit of a family destroyed by the violent, "coronelista" culture of the Araguaia Valley, where it was common to have family groups involved in sexual abuse addictions and abandonment, Hal Wildson felt welcomed in the Tupi-Guarani village, where he a family - "a godfather, a godmother, godchildren" - and was baptised, and was baptised, receiving the name "Tupã Mirim". He had already lived with indigenous people in Araguaia, land of the Xavante people, invaded and victimised by gold mining. "They were discriminated against, as there was already social neglect in the city. As a As a child, I didn't know why this was happening. Later I understood that it was because of the the way the city was structured", he recalls.

TEKO PORÃ AND UBUNTU

In the Tupi-Guarani village of São Sebastião, he dreamed the expression Re-Utopya written in urucum and dendê, and "of the word and its symbolism I saw a Brazilian flag, but among the stars was written: tekoporã and ubuntu, replacing the positivist slogan order in progress". "In short, tekoporã expresses the living well in the community, a search for balance in the relationships between people and the environment, capable to understand it as a living and active being. Ubuntu means 'I am because we are'. I am human, and human nature implies compassion, sharing respect, empathy", wrote the artist in December 2021, in the Re-Utopya Manifesto. He then thought that if it it was no longer possible to erase the country's past, it should be possible to reinvention.

"MONUMENT TO INDEPENDENCE" (2020/2022)

Set against a red wall, the installation "Monument to Independence (2020/2022) is composed of five works which are re-interpretations of flags of Brazil that already existed or remained projects. "Who is this independence for?", asks the artist. "I recreate these flags with I recreate these flags with the idea of trying to update this project of Brazil in progress. What in these last 200 years has Brazil actually fought to become independent? Freedom came to whom in Brazil? When it became independence in the last century it was to become a monarchy, and still have people enslaved, while many countries became independent already as a republic. a republic. This says a lot about our history. This colonialism perpetuated in the republic, and helped it become a republic of inequality, which is also a theme in my work", he says.

"I look back at Brazil's colonial past and see how this project has brought us to arrive at the Brazil of today. It is this Brazil that has corruption, militias militias, violence, mining taking away indigenous lands", he stresses. "That is why I use this symbol of the flags, which is also a metaphor for how, in this moment of identity crisis in Brazil's identity crisis, raising flags has become a way of trying to fight against of trying to fight against this past, and who knows, building a more just future. future.

"RE-FLORESTAR UTOPYA" (POLYPT, 2022)

While in the "Monument to Independence" the artist reflects on the past, "in this dystopia of our we are living this past now, colonial", in "Re-FlorestarUtopya"the look is towards the future. "I have the past that I want to transform, and there is no way to build the better future without looking to the past. I look at this past and by aiming for the utopian future I create the Re-Utopya", explains Wildson.

He says he took the "Re-Utopya" flag to the Independence Park Independence Park, "that place where independence was symbolically proclaimed, on the banks of the Ipiranga", raised the flag on a tree planted in the Park, and photographed and filmed throughout the day. He then made ink-based interventions on the photographs, drawing roots in black and red, "once again making analogies to teko Porã and Ubuntu, which are those roots that, who knows, can transform Brazil into a more just country. country". "Based on these philosophies and not on order and progress," he reaffirms.

AFFLUENT SERIES

In this series, begun last year and produced to date, Hal Wildson creates four paintings in acrylic on paper, measuring 110 x 110cm, in which the faces of black and indigenous Brazilians occupy maps of Brazil. "When you think of independence, the Ipiranga stream becomes this symbolic river, this place of symbolic water where independence was proclaimed, an analogy of what in fact was," he observes. "I think  how many rivers streams and waters were not places of resistance in this period, but have been erased from this history? Our independence, as much as it was proclaimed by a king proclaimed by a king, a white elite, was also an independence in which there was much struggle and much resistance. That is why I speak of these tributaries, and I give name the works of the rivers that fed the villages and quilombos, bringing to light how the importance of this resistance was also paramount to Brazil's independence of Brazil. Not only at that time. The construction of an independence that is in process of being, because the country is not a fair place for all".

The works of this series that will be exhibited are called "Juruena River", "Riacho Açucena", "Rio Araguaia", e "Rio Bacaxá".

"SEED OF THE FUTURE (2021/2022)

In the corner of the gallery, Hal Wildson will plant a urucum seedling, and on the wall will be written a verse of his that on the wall will be written a verse of his, which accompanies many of his works: "It is in memory that we plant the seed of the future". This work "looks" at all the others exhibited, creating a connection with all of them. "It is important to look at this ancestral root in order to understand understand that the construction of a future depends on it. How forgetfulness is a violence. Remembering things is the only way way of planting the future".says the artist.

"That is why I plant an urucum tree, to bring out the importance of looking at our ancestral past of looking back to our ancestral past and understanding that the struggle continues, that history is still being made. If I talk about utopia, there's no way I can't talk about about original peoples of the land because it is they who guarantee the future of the earth. How important it is to talk about the demarcation of indigenous lands in Brazil, because without indigenous lands, without the indigenous peoples, there is no future, there is no more Brazil".

"ORIGINAL UTOPIA" (TYPEWRITER), 2021

The largest work ever made by the artist, "Original Utopia" (2021) has 180 x 336 cm, and the image of the crowd in a demonstration waving flags was made with typewriter typing on 384 sheets of photocopies of pages of the book "O povo brasileiro: a formação e o sentido do Brasil", from Darcy Ribeiro.  Hal Wildson created the image from several photographs photographs of demonstrations in Brazil, and points out that also present in also present in this work the "thought of identity and of ninguentude".

He states that "forgetfulness is the worst violence because it takes away your past and also takes away your future". "Amnesty in Brazil comes with a violence, it forces us to forget the past. the past. The typewriter comes in as this symbolic object, to speak the recent past of Brazil, especially the dictatorship, but also for having been for decades as an instrument to create documents and to create the identities of the Brazilian people. The process of this object made for writing fits perfectly to my work, because it succeeds in summing up this question of identity identity, history, and rewriting. My work also talks about how to look at the past, and rewrite the possibility of a future". 

The laborious process of constructing the works in this series, conceived in 2018, and realized for the first time in 2019, has its "technical intelligence" coming from the cross stitch embroiderythat the artist squares that you put together and create images, almost pixels. creating images, almost like pixels". "To create the works with the typewriter I do this to the extreme. First I make a kind of mould, where I know where the red and black will be. All letters. I make a sketch on a piece of paper and and mark where each area of colour is going to be. As I make several layers, one layer erases the other erasing the other, which is a metaphor of the historical fact that one layer is overlapping another, creating a new reality. You erase something and create You erase something and create a memory based on that erasure, on oblivion, which has a lot to do with the this poetic language of my work". "To get the intense red or the intense black black, I create more than eight layers of letters in the same place, until I until I can fill it in. For example, in one layer I repeat memory, word and forgetfulness. In another I put random letters to fill In another one I put random letters to fill the empty spaces, and I keep repeating until I in fact create the colour, the light, the colour, the outline".

He also uses a stamp created with the typography of the machine, to "deepen certain words, and speed up the creation process".

ABOUT HAL WILDSON

Artist multimedia artist and poet of mixed race, born in 1991 in Vale do Araguaia region between Goiás and Mato Grosso, Hal Wildson is known for his research that involves concepts of writing, identity and the reconstruction of collective and autobiographical memories, crossed by social and political issues. political issues. The research on memory and forgetfulness is the basis of a work that investigates the creation of narrative territories through symbols and documents used as tools of construction and reconstruction in the personal and collective collective field.

"I am instigated by documentary collections, written techniques and materials of documentation, as I believe that documents are objects that allow the creation of symbolic narratives of memory, in the personal sphere, creating fictions existence itself and on a large scale in the fabrication of the history of a nation, since every memory carries with it the weight of forgetfulness - what are we forgetting to tell? are we forgetting to tell?"

ABOUT DIVINO SOBRAL

Divino Sobral was born in Goiânia, in 1966, where he lives and works as an independent artist and curator. He received the awards of curator of the Salão Anapolino de Artes (2017) and the Marcantonio Vilaça CNI SESI SENAI (2015); Art Criticism award at Situações Brasilia Award of Visual Arts of the DF (2014); Marcantonio Vilaça MinC-Funarte Award (2009). Between 2011 and 2013 he was director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Goiás. He publishes regularly publishes texts on Brazilian art in academic journals, books, catalogues and and newspapers.

Service - Exhibition "Hal Wildson - Re-Utopya

Movimento Gallery, Gávea, Rio de Janeiro

Opening: 9  June 2022, from 6pm to 9pm

Until: 30 July 2022

Free entry

Support: Becks

Rua dos Oitis, 15, Gávea, CEP 22451-050, Rio de Janeiro, RJ