Project

Babel means “confusion”, a picture of the collective human intent which is frustrated when dissent is established among men by means of languages marked by difference and belligerence. The chaos and unequal flows of the cities, especially a planned city such as Belo Horizonte, echoes the ancestral incident at the Tower of  Babel as well as the radicalism of current social and political uprisings in Brazil. Babélica gathers the artists selected by the 2021-22 New Artists Call. For this edition, a collective show has been organized, a show that recognizes in the proposals brought forth by the artists the same diverse passages and political implications of everything that involves the shared living of the legislated public space of the city (polis). Bárbara Macedo, Froiid, Lucas Skritor and Sara Lana, each one in tune with her/his own experience, deal with the multiplicity of city voices and poetically raise questions that cross the urban space in which they create zones of encounter, dispute and negotiation of senses.Bárbara Macedo presents a photographic essay in which people rediscover their bodies in a delicate way, stripped of any erotic appeal, touching the fluidity of genders. The bodies frustrate the expectation of exoticism and bring us closer to the sensitive human element the artist wishes to frame. The mapping composed by Sara Lana is also affectionate; the registers of the Santa Efigênia neighborhood were collected from the contact with local dwellers who drew routes on small pieces of paper. Once the fragments are reconstituted, the city revealed in this cartography displays a unique partiality. By means of artificial intelligence, Froiid, whose artistic research is especially dedicated to peripheral urban aesthetics, composed a rap piece made up of multiple combinations of pre-programmed strophes that flow endless and randomly, always preserving the meaning of the verses. The work is presented in a sound installation of visual impact. Lucas Skritor considers himself a street artist. Besides creating a graffiti piece at the show, he also brings pieces that result from the coming together of the urban-image culture and traditions of the history of art. In his paintings and assemblages, he organizes materials he collects from the streets and articulates them with economy of resources, formal elegance and compositional rigor.      

Júlio Martins, curator.

Expographic map

From the series “Habeas Corpus”, 2018-22
Print on photo paper, 30 x 42 cm each