Escudos

"Upon coming into contact with Lina Bo Bardi’s architecture at SESC Pompeia, the piece Escudos (Shields), which had been shown at other venues before, had to cater to the scale of the environment so it could engage in a dialogue with all those shapes and spatial concepts. The venue’s architecture created a need for placing several ‘shields’ in different places, as if we had a situation of uncontrolled erosion.  

Because the piece involves water, an element that is hard to control, I realize that a negotiation phase is always necessary before setting the piece up. I invariably stumble upon questionings regarding the consequences of having water leakages, or salt altering the materials around it, infiltrations, or deteriorating facilities. However, for its presentation at the 18th Videobrasil, Escudos was not meant to have a crude aspect. There is nothing to be stained or corroded in the concrete that lies underneath the piece; one needs only to determine how the object will interact with the different facilities in which it will be installed. In a conversation with Diego Matos, part of the curatorial team, this piece’s new condition was described:

‘I believe there is a new component which concerns our movement in relation to the building, and in this sense, the presence of the shields allows us to observe the architectural space in a different way, while inverting the notion of perennity imposed by built spaces. So I was thinking that these shields, each with its singularity (although they are made of the same material and process), will give us an aspect of unpredictability that makes the piece powerful, but unusually fragile, which I regard as something positive.’

When I started considering this piece, I had been creating different pieces of clothing for a costume to be worn in a performance in which I walk against a jet of water. I move towards it until I am exhausted, or until something else interrupts the endeavor. Both the costume and the various types of shield I made arose out of that experience. Pictures of conflicts, clashes and confrontations are constantly published in newspapers around the world. One of these pictures, of a water jet containing a crowd, drew my attention. 

During my residency under the Bolsa Pampulha program, I had the chance to come into contact with the installation O Ignoto (1996), by Artur Barrio. While speaking to Júlia Rebouças about the impact the piece had on me, she told me about a conversation she had with the artist, when he wrote the sentence 'salt is sea.' Because I had been away from the sea for a year, and because of the possibility of developing a project to travel the Brazilian coastline, making observation drawings from the perspective of the water, I decided that this would be the title of my project. I travelled for two years in direct contact with the sea, and now I live in a city with no sea once again. Perhaps the shield made of salt and São Paulo are symbolically connected."

Amanda Melo in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)