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05.11.2013

National Symbol

Galeria Jaqueline Martins, São Paolo, Brazil
October 7, 2013 – November 16, 2013

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National Symbol / At your service* / Self Defence
(dedicated to Marcelo Eduardo Bovo Pesseghini)

“Crime is, then, necessary; it is bound up with the fundamental conditions of all social life and by that very fact it is useful, because these conditions of which it is a part are themselves indispensable to the normal evolution of morality and law.”
Émile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method

The structure of the repressive apparatus of the State is based on the use of lawful violence, a fact that separates two distinct sides: the police and the criminal. In 1966 the Eldorado dos Carajás massacre took place, in which nineteen people who had been participating in a demonstration led by the MST – Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Workers’ Movement) were assassinated by the military police of the State of Pará. Comrades killed by knives and bullets. The changes that have taken place regarding land reform and property rights since then seem far from significant.

Edwin Sanchez is a part-time artist, producing his work on weekends or in the evenings, in between the projects that ultimately pay the monthly bills: design projects for advertising agencies, including campaigns for electronic devices, cocoa powder and detergents. He builds totems using TV sets that exhibit hastily edited videos, which in most cases show people exercising or using such appliances or products. In other cases, colourful packaging twirls in the centre of the screen, spinning round in line with the retail market’s classic choreography. It could be said that before Sanchez the artist, there is Sanchez the civilian. The individual who can also execute his actions without the initial validation of the art system – and going further, who partly takes advantage of this particular condition in order to find materials for his work as an artist (1).

Twenty-one years have passed since the Carandiru Massacre, the reported number of deaths account for 111 victims, a visually harmonious sequence that does not invalidate the death sentence. Point 13 of the PCC – Primeiro Comando da Capital (First Command of the Capital) – states: “We must stand united and organized to avoid a massacre similar or worse than that which took place in the Detention House on October 2nd, 1992, where 111 prisoners were cowardly assassinated, an event that shall never be extinguished from Brazilian society’s conscience. Because we, from the Comando, will rock the system, forcing the authorities to change such inhuman, unmerciful prison policy, laden with unfairness, oppression, torture and massacres in the prisons.”

Contrary to the character who observes the situation from the outside, Edwin attempts to draw closer to his object of study, standing near to the context which he speaks of, as an observer rather than a delinquent, even as he works with elements that subvert laws. The artist feels the need to be or at least maintain a link to his country of origin, and his source material is imbued with this context. It is not easy for him to sell a weapon or assault a crippled beggar, and although the load of guilt does not vanish, it plays a necessary part in expanding the discussion of specific social boundaries. Someone must play this part. The artist risks [or at least attempts to] stand in the same frame as he exhibits, rather than in the shielded and privileged standpoint of art, and the actions are carried out in the streets, in acceptance of the dynamics, distinct from the laws of the State or those dictated by morality. He became Jimmy’s friend, who taught him how to handle knives. In his attempt to interview combatants and guerrilla fighters, he actively maintained a network of contacts, and when he managed to do so, they recounted stories such as one about an alligator that was exhausted from eating countless human bodies [A]. He visited a participative sex house where he documented scenes of collective rendezvous, and when a client complained of a stolen wallet he was almost caught using his camera [B]. He bribed policemen to have them rent him a gun [C]. The artist is surrounded by risks at all times, always lying in wait to capture him.

The Vigário Geral massacre in Rio de Janeiro left 21 dead. The classic image shown by the media of the bodies laid out in the community depicts 18 of them aligned side by side: 2 rows and 9 columns, the other 3 are missing from the scene – some of them wear nothing from the waist up, one is covered by a sheet, another wears a dress. At the time, the UPPs – Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (Pacifying Police Unit) had not yet been set up. Now, the individuals who get hit can no longer be depicted in any photograph: their bodies disappear mysteriously or, as some may say, they never existed in the first place.

In Bogota’s city centre it is possible to find the stuff he needs to develop his projects very closely. As long as one can get there by taxi to avoid thievery in the vicinities of certain brothel areas. “Santafe” is a place of this kind, fraught with pick pocketing, labourers wearing jackets with the Claro logo, drunk and asleep on strip-club tables, police cordons, prostitutes, drugs, weapons, Poker, barbecued meat on sticks. The girls are neo-slaves, migrating to the capital from other regions in Colombia (as is current in Brazil or in other countries), sleeping in the same place as they work (renting a room both to live in and to meet with clients). Waiters do not earn salaries, but get paid for every beer sold, or else resort to tips or making money off anything they manage to sell – legal or otherwise. Wilson is one of these waiters who work in one of the many brothels in the neighbourhood. He acts as mediator for the artist to attain part of his working material, he helped him in the search for a .38 for “Inserciones en circuitos ideológicos” (“Insertions in ideological circuits”) and in the initial contact with the characters for the project “Heroes en Colômbia si existen” (“Yes, there are heroes in Colombia”) [D].

In some cases, after viewing one of his works, it is instinctive to utter a “son of a bitch!”; morality, yes, always morality, never abandons us. It is necessary to stop, in order to understand what is going on. To realize it is also our fault. We prefer to keep our hands clean, commenting only on the absurdity of such actions [ask the gallerist about “Arte Útil” (“Useful Art”)]. If before participating in the artist’s actions the characters in Sanchez’s works were invisible, they are now granted the right to live; the individuals are now seen by other strata of the community, and their image now inhabits a protected zone. Socially, a feeling of compassion is evoked for those who previously only configured as props in the urban scenario. The work will always be struggling – both with the context from which it arises and with its own ethics.

The artist remains in his intellectual role and cannot speak for the oppressed/subaltern/marginal – as the artist only acts as a mediator of things between different worlds. Here we can refer to an enquiry posed by Spivak (2) – The intellectual must be clear about this condition: it is not possible to speak for the Other. Proximity, affect, and overall, eliminating all pre-existing judgement are the necessary structures for the testimony gathered by Sanchez to become less diffuse, thus acquiring greater symbolic force. Once again he is seized by perversity: the Other is granted a voice, and the audience it activates is limited to a very small circuit. The comfort offered/granted by art is an aftereffect of the artist’s work/actions.

The ten-year-old Joel da Conceição Castro was murdered on November 22nd, 2010, during a police action in the Northeast part of Amaralina, a neighbourhood in the city of Salvador. Joel was inside his home, getting ready for bed, when a bullet fired by the police hit him. He was killed during an operation of the 40th CIPM – Companhia Independente da Polícia Militar (Independent Battalions of the Military Police) in his neighbourhood. His father watched his son’s slow death, as the policemen refused to provide emergency assistance.

[A] Símbolo Pátrio/National Symbol. The artist bribes two policemen for them to rent him a Mini Uzi. The work is presented as documentation of the artist’s action, exhibiting the process of obtaining the firearm through diagrams, photography, and a frottage that ultimately confers a realistic quality to the project, seeing the decal is proof of existence of its referent.
[B] Desapariciones/Disappearances. During several months the artist interviewed ex-participants of groups such as the FARC (Forças Armadas Revolucionárias da Colômbia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) and the AUC (Autodefesas Unidas da Colômbia or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia), who are now re-integrated in society, performing other types of work. The artist requested that each interviewee make sketches using very simple lines or doodles – they resemble drawings made by children. The scenes were later animated to create a narrative of the execution procedures and mechanisms of terror employed by paramilitary groups or guerrilla combatants.
[C] Sexo participativo/Participative sex. There is a modality of sexual rendez-vous where anyone who pays is able to join in. The artist employs a hidden camera to record images from within a brothel. The final edit resembles a music video clip, or one that could easily be found using the word amateur as a tag, or even a promotional video of the space. The feeling of collective coalescence is broken when one of the participants declares he has been robbed.
[D] Los Heroes en Colombia si existen/Yes there are heroes in Colombia. As in a porn movie, the artist/agent hires a couple to have sex in front of the cameras. The prostitute’s actual working place is the location, and her partner is a mutilated soldier from the Colombian army. During the sex scenes dialogues between the artist and a cast tell of heroic situations.
[E] Retrato de familia/Family portrait. A photo album with beautiful photographs of the artist as a child with his family in the Nápoles farm owned by Pablo Escobar (for the second time in less than three months I leave my homage to Pepe, the hippopotamus, sacrificed by the Colombian army in the Magdalena River, after several failed attempts to bring him back to the farm. The animal had fled from his “almost” natural habitat). In the album there is an image of the artist embraced with a ESMAD (Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios or Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squad) policeman, and one where he poses next to a vehicle that formerly belonged to a drug dealer and currently belongs to the Colombian police, who now regularly displays it in public – undoubtedly as a good example to society that crime does pay off after all, especially when it refers to imported models. A triumph!

*A la orden – Colombian expression commonly used by merchants and traders: “At your service”; “How can I help you?”

(1) During a period of time the artist worked for the police in the production of institutional videos. He took possession of videos recorded by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia / People’s Army) that were held by the State. The videos exhibit guerrilla warfare that is faulty and fraught with human characteristics, a lame group that happens to possess guns. The incorporation of this material could create complications for the artist with the State, but this does not happen. The outreach of Art’s audience seems minimal.

(2) SPIVAK, Gayatri Chakravorty. Pode o subalterno falar? (Can the Subaltern Speak?) Translated by Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida; Marcos Pereira Feitosa; André Pereira Feitosa. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2010.

P.S. I don’t believe that Marcelinho executed his Family, drove the car to school and then committed suicide.

Renan Araujo, october 2013

http://www.galeriajaquelinemartins.com
Facebook : Galeria Jaqueline Martins

Photos by Glenda Martins and Paula Dalberto.
Courtesy Galerie Jaqueline Martins.

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