SÃO PAULO.- Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel is presenting SOAP, Tamar Guimarães’ solo exhibition at Galpão in São Paulo. The show presents the six episodes that compose the homonymous project, as well as episode 6 1⁄2, in which actress Camila Motta retrospectively narrates the whole series. The last two chapters of the film premiere on the occasion, marking the conclusion of the process, begun in 2020 in collaboration with Luisa Cavanaugh and Rusi Millán Pastori.
SOAP manipulates the language of cinema and soap operas, accompanying a group of left-wingers’ attempt to infiltrate right- wing social networks. The tactic chosen by the group, composed of intellectuals and cultural agents, is the creation of a telenovela that would convey subversive messages in the apparently conservative form of the religious cultural product. Between the sectarian discourse that immobilizes them, the global pandemic that restricts the possibility of physical encounters and their class privileges, the group tries to find solutions for collective organization. Guimarães takes up a central debate in Brazilian political art, namely, the relationship between the avant-garde and mass media. As the characters denounce their own assumptions regarding the political life of the people, their distance from the part of the population they seek to reach becomes patent, illustrating the artist’s inquiry into the possibility of social action through art.
Unpublished prints produced in collaboration with Kasper Akhøj as an offshoot of The Parrot’s Tail, a video installation commissioned for the Belgian pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2015, are also featured in the exhibition. The artists print fragments of text that allude to the (mis)encounters between the Western avant-garde and the Amerindian world. These graphic pieces communicate with SOAP in the sense that they start from historical facts in order to examine the multiple points of view constituting them.
Tamar Guimarães works with film, sound and installation. Her work is based on historical research and frequently incorporates found objects such as photographs, texts and documents. A hybrid account mixing documentary, essay and fiction is constructed through the reorganization of these materials. The artist investigates the way in which social relations of class, race and labor are manifested in different cultural products such as architecture, religious literature or dance.
Her recent solo exhibitions include Sala de video: Tamar Guimarães, MASP – Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, Brazil (2022); El tejido hablado, Zarigueya/Alabado Contemporáneo, Quito, Ecuador (2019) Black Box, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, USA(2017); La Incorrupta, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain (2016) e The Florists From Beyond the Grave, SKMU Sørlandets Kunstmuseum, Kristiansand, Norway (2015). Guimarães also took part in the group shows Illiberal Arts, Haus der Kulturen de Welt, Berlin, Germany (2021); Nine Lives, Renaissance Society, Chicago, USA (2020); Le jour des esprits est notre nuit, CRAC Alsace, Altkirch, France; Blackout, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Museum Kunsthal Rotterdam, Rotterdam, Netherlands (2019) and Afinidades Eletivas – 33a Bienal de São Paulo, Fundação Bienal, São Paulo, Brazil (2018). The artist has works in important public collections, including CIFO – Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, Estados Unidos; FRAC Auvergne, Clermont-Ferrand, França; Guandong Museum, Guangzhou, China; Instituto Inhotim, Brumadinho, Minas Gerais, Brasil; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Espanha; Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum, Nova York, Estados Unidos e Tate Modern, Londres, Reino Unido.
