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Curators propose readings with multiple meanings when visiting Ways of Seeing Brazil: Itaú Cultural celebrates 30

To celebrate Itaú Cultural's 30th anniversary, we are presenting hundreds of pieces from the Itaú Unibanco Collection highlighting the complexity of the cultural center's holdings and programs. All Itaú Cultural departments have been involved in this curatorial challenge to present an exhibition based on a collection of more than 15,000 artworks purchased over four decades with company funds without benefit of tax incentives. The selection will give visitors a glimpse of how this collection intertwines with the history of Brazilian art itself.

 

Itaú Cultural is organized as a museum: it not only collects, documents, preserves, studies and shows cultural assets, but also broadcasts and educates. It focuses on several aspects of culture and reaches out to the entire country to address Brazil's great diversity. Its project has the action range of a State: an undertaking of advanced capitalism that associates the company with society's symbolic production while converting financial capital into symbolic capital.

 

The current exhibition title "Ways of Seeing Brazil" suggests possible transverse interpretations of this collection among many other readings. Its multiple meanings prompt viewers to discover them and surprise them at every step by enunciating the grandeur of Brazilian culture. The exhibits on the ground floor show São Paulo. The ones on the lower level start with technological language projects, Portinari's economic cycles, relationships of subjectivity and more. The 1st floor hosts the form and materiality of the sign of art and the library presents Itaú Cultural’s Rumos program. Finally, the 2nd floor exhibits focus the colonial period, Baroque art and slavery, and their impact on contemporary art. Each way of seeing is also a means of organizing ideas.

 

Every work of art is a signifier awaiting signifieds projected by those viewing it. The more people are willing to relate to a work, assess what it is showing them, and take away their own interpretation, the more this relationship is enriched. Rather than having a center, Brazilian art has many ways of materializing depending on the specificities of each place. All artists are in themselves clusters of creativity.

 

So the exhibition has no linear layout. Each visitor may organize their own journey as an exercise of being free and open to learning. “Ways of Seeing” is particularly meant for people who are not familiar with art. The information available on the floors merely suggests ways of seeing, points out special or possibly unknown aspects, poses hypotheses and asks questions. Any way of engaging with art is relevant here.

 

 

Os curadores

[Paulo Herkenhoff, Thais Rivitti e Leno Veras]

 

For Paulo Herkenhoff, Thais Rivitti and Leno Veras, the exhibition proposes many possible transversal readings of the Itaú Unibanco Art Collection, and the activities of the Itaú Cultural invite the public to discover the grandness of Brazilian culture.

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2017 - DESENVOLVIDO PELA CONTEÚDO COMUNICAÇÃO