Brazil says hello!
UTILITY ITEMS Julio Vilani's works.
"We are very happy with the results. The response to his finished montage is beyond expectations. He is very poetic in his approach. The Indian audience is very much appreciating the works which include lots of paintings and two visual installations," says Paulo Marcos Moraes, cultural counsellor, Brazilian Embassy.
Julio Vilani's exhibition, `Short Stories' mounted at India Habitat Centre, is part of the larger effort to project Brazilian art and culture in India. It is but the first step in the state-of-the-art to state-of-the-heart route. It comes following the recent visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Brazil, where a Memorandum of Understanding had been signed and a letter from the Brazilian Minister of Culture, Gilberto Gil, who is also a famous singer, writer and composer, had been addressed to Union Minister Ambika Soni, launching a six-month long Festival, that concludes in March next year. A number of promotions for visual arts, cinema, music, dance, fashion and academics are on the anvil.
Says Moraes, "Brazil and India have a lot of commonality, share bilateral history and a similar approach at multi-national for a. We need to make a concrete effort to have deeper bilateral ties as there is a lot of emotional similarity between the two countries. Culture can be an interesting path to closer relations. And Vilani has been a forerunner, a pioneer in his field. This exhibition would make the vision a reality."
He rues that "few people know that Brazil has a long pre-western period history. There is a lot of indigenous culture, and a sizeable indigenous population. We have a pre-historic culture. It is important that Indians know about our past as most people think Brazil started 500 years ago which is not true."
Curated by Alka Pande, Vilani's exhibition is constructed following explorations of different media. The first is represented by one of the artists' "machines", an assemblage called Theoretical Wonderer: a bicycle wheel on top of a table - not without recalling Marcel Duchamp's sculpture made with the same object - moves a pair of shoes, the artists' shoes, that clap on the floor pacing... nowhere.
The second family of works is a series done on old notary French manuscripts. Collages, paintings, drawings, a number of different interventions are made using the handwritten documents as background.
The artist, who has been living in Paris for over 20 years, has also brought larger oil on canvas works. They, however, do not present the written background but do have a pronounced familiarity with the works on paper.
The third exploration takes the form of large embroideries. As in the machine where old shoes and bicycle parts are put to use, and as in the collage series made on old manuscripts, here too the artist departs from "something old" to create "something new".
The exhibition concludes this coming Sunday.
ZIYA US SALAM
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