Livro Aberto - Eldorado e Noite Americana

"The works I am presenting at the 18th festival are part of my recent production, using the book as its medium and articulating the contents and shapes of the pages selected. I use volumes of a library established in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as other books about Brazil. In this piece, I rearrange graphical elements that relate to behaviors observed in my intimate sphere, and I set forth issues that pertain to the collective. 

During the military dictatorship in Brazil, my youthful perception of this library intermingled with the prevailing atmosphere in the country and the Brazilian intellectual community. Fear of censorship and political persecution got mixed with my perception of the meaning of the books on my home shelves. To me, those books were dangerous because they might be deemed subversive.

The volumes that comprise the drawings in the Livro Aberto (Open Book) series were chosen because they contain uncut pages. It was necessary to use a spatula to open them up, but instead of using the spatula, I unstitched the sheets and spread them out, obtaining large sheets. Then, I proceeded to the complete or partial cover up of the text with drawings. Thus, the process of producing other narratives for the books’ stories combines two opposing gestures: unstitching and 'spreading out' the sheets, and 'sewing up' the texts with the drawings. 

The title Livro Aberto pays reference to the procedure of opening the folios in each volume and enclosing their contents by covering the text with drawings. The term also refers to the act of 'offering oneself, holding no secrets’.

The drawings in the series Livro Aberto – Eldorado and Noite Americana (2011-12) were elaborated with pages from the book Uma Comunidade Amazônica: Estudo do Homem nos Trópicos (1957), by the American anthropologist Charles Wagley, about the Itá community, in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. Some pages were painted blue (Noite Americana), others were painted yellow (Eldorado). Next, I used brushes to make ink stick drawings on the colored pages, based on pictures of warriors by Goya and Hokusai. Then, I attached these pages onto the white sheets, on which I drew scenes from the film Iracema, uma transa amazônica, using graffiti and a pyrographer.

Iracema... deals with the impact wrought on local populations by the construction of the Trans-Amazonian highway. Directed by Jorge Bodanzky and Orlando Senna, in 1976, the film was made during my childhood, when the region was controlled by the military. The movie was censored and would only be released in 1981.

The piece Livro Aberto - Eldorado and Noite Americana is a celebration of books, a tribute to the work of masterful filmmakers and drawers, and sets forth questions regarding the differences and similarities between art drawing and illustration. The copying of Goya and Hokusai's pictures and the reproduction of the film Iracema... pay reference to the traditional method of learning to draw by watching the masters. 

The entire process takes place as a visual edition of texts and pictures within a reference system that reflects on the practice of drawing, and poses questions regarding interpretation, memory, and the process of civilization."

 

Teresa Berlinck in a statement to PLATFORM:VB (October 2013)