experiência concreta #1 (diálogo de mãos) [concrete experience #1 (hands dialogue)], 2017
prints of images extracted from digital newspapers, catalog of exhibitions of visual arts and manuals of survival and box of naval hardboard
60 x 60 x 4 cm
photo Filipe Berndt

Experiência Concreta [Concrete Experience] is a series that seeks to trace relationships between works, and actions, developed by artists belonging to the Brazilian concrete and neoconcrete art movement, and the violence contained in the history of Brazil. The purpose here is not to seek a genealogy of the Brazilian social thought through different ways of representing historical and social facts (visual arts and / or images of violence). This series of works intends to show how some daily procedures, such as tying hands forming the infinity symbol, can be present in both representations of the world. Or even as simple shapes as a triangle can reveal the perversities of slave trade and slave trade routes.

In Experiência Concreta (Triângulo Atlântico) bags used to transport grains are used as a base for collages with high tack adhesive tape. The triangular shapes found in each collage were taken from illustrations that map the routes of colonial trafficking between Europe, Africa and America. At each point in the triangle one commodity was exchanged for another. Weapons and ammunition from Europe were exchanged, in Africa, for people to work in an enslaved situation; enslaved people were sold in America to work in the plantations; plantation products returned to European settlers, who bought weapons and ammunition to restart the slave trade chain. Thus, the commercial triangle supplied itself.

The materials used in Experiência Concreta (Triângulo Atlântico) were cataloged in journalistic articles and texts documenting lynching and popular justice throughout the Brazilian territory. Adhesive tapes, commonly used to hold people during lynching, are used to construct the triangular shapes of the collages. To highlight the relations between those involved in the colonial trafficking of persons and goods, the names of the continents that formed the slave trade routes were engraved at the vertices of each triangle. This engraving was made using the technique of dry bas relief, since the intention is that the names of these continents are only revealed from the approximation of the gaze, thus making a parallel with the systematic attempt to erase the Brazilian colonial and enslaver past. To fix the collages to the wall gold-colored chrome iron nails are used, bringing another layer in the relationship between wealth building and violence that characterize different periods of Brazilian history.




experiência concreta #2 (diálogo de mãos) [concrete experience #2 (hand dialogue)], 2017
plastic rope, adhesive tape, plastic clamp, wire, bicycle padlock, flexible electric cable and navy plywood box
74 x 101,5 x 10 cm
photo Filipe Berndt




experiência concreta #5 (sete linhas) [concrete experience #5 (seven lines)], 2017
cube built by silver tape on wall
variable dimensions
photo Filipe Berndt