Blind Field

January through March 2013

Curators: Tumelo Mosaka and Irene Small

Cao Guimarães and Carolina Cordeiro
Campo Cego (Blind Field), 2008
10 photographs
© Cao Guimarães and Carolina Cordeiro

Brazil has long been called "the country of the future." From the dramatic construction of the ultramodern capital of Brasília in the late 1950s to the country's status as an emerging economic powerhouse in the 21st century, Brazilian national identity is inextricably intertwined with the idea of its potentiality. Yet the Brazilian saying from which this idea derives is more complex, for it suggests that the notion of potentiality is itself something of a mirage, an illusion that blinds its citizens to the reality of the present day. In 1970, the French sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre described the "blind field" as a transitional zone that lies between socio-economic modes of production and escapes comprehension within existing ideological paradigms. This exhibition takes up blindness as a critical category, a metaphor for the way in which the obstruction of perception can illuminate alternate modes of knowledge and experience. It focuses on a young generation of artists working in Brazil who offer a critical perspective on processes of transition within contemporary society, be it from the public space of the street to the virtual zone of the computer screen, or the scale of local communities to the structure of large-scale political action. These works speak to the complexity and heterogeneity of an art milieu that is both tied to the local and manifestly global in reach.

PROPOSED ARTISTS: Jonathas de Andrade (b. 1982 Maceió, works in Recife), Tatiana Blass (b. 1979 São Paulo, works in São Paulo), Marcelo Cidade (b. 1978 São Paulo, works in São Paulo), Marilá Dardot (b. 1973 Belo Horizonte, works in São Paulo), Marcius Galan (b. 1972 USA, works in São Paulo), Cao Guimarães (b. 1965 Belo Horizonte, works in Belo Horizonte), André Komatsu (b. 1978 São Paulo, works in São Paulo), Graziela Kunsch (b. 1979 Great Britain, works in São Paulo), Cinthia Marcelle (b. 1974 Belo Horizonte, works in Belo Horizonte), Lais Myrrha (b. 1974 Belo Horizonte, works in São Paulo), Nicolás Robbio (b. 1975 Argentina, works in São Paulo), Daniel Steegman Mangrané (b. 1977 Spain, works in Rio de Janeiro), Rodrigo Matheus (b. 1974 São Paulo, works in São Paulo), Carlos Mélo (b. 1969 Riacho das Almos, works in Recife), Matheus Rocha Pitta (b. 1980 Tiradentes, works in Rio de Janeiro), Thiago Rocha Pitta (b. 1980 Tiradentes, works in São Paulo), Marcelo Sola (b. 1971 Goiânia, works in Goiânia), and Héctor Zamora (b. 1974 Mexico, works in São Paulo)

Sponsored in part by the Francis P. Rohlen Visiting Artists Fund/College of Fine and Applied Arts and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency

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