The artist created a site-specific installation that dialogues with Ibirapuera Park, where the museum is located, and launches a provocation on the paradox of a “polluted oasis” inside the metropolis of São Paulo
From 2 March, the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo (MAM São Paulo) receives an unpublished work by the artist Shirley Paes Leme, specially designed to occupy the institution's Glass Room.
At the invitation of the chief curator of MAM, Cauê Alves, the artist conceived an installationsite-specific that dialogues with the surroundings of the museum, and at the same time instigates the audience to think about weather conditions.
Our world (2022-2023) is a installation composed of more than 1000 used car air conditioning filters and reflective aluminum. While the filters form a city skyline on the living room wall, cloudy and out of focus bringing the image caused by air pollution, the mirrored floor will reflect the landscape and architecture of the Park, and the visitor, placing the trees and the marquee in the same space.
The artist explains that this mirrored character of the floor must make the Glass Room a confusing place., because the public won't know very well what's to come, since everything around will be within the same space. "At the same time, the visitor sees himself and sees the trees, the roof, the wall reflected on the floor, and also see the trees, the royal wall, causing a confusion of realities”, comments Shirley Paes Leme.
Simultaneously, there will be the skyline on the wall, turning the place that seemed contemplative into a space, indeed, provocative. The dialogue with Ibirapuera Park was also present in the last works that occupied the Glass Room at MAM, like the termite mounds (2022), by Lidia Lisbon; Origin and destiny (2021), by Rodrigo Bueno, and Retromemory (2022), by Lenora de Barros.
The air conditioning filters that build the skyline on site are all used, with the dark appearance of the “smoke mark”, as the artist calls, considering that the city's polluted air passed through them. The smoke trails are part of, in a way, of the artist's trajectory, which he has already used as material to compose works from the series Voltage, City Waste and smoke-action.
The smeared character of these filters evokes a somewhat frightening tension., since it invites the public to think that the same air that passes through them is the air that we breathe. A survey released by the Institute of Energy and Environment (Iema) in 2022 indicated that air pollution in the city of São Paulo was above that recommended by the WHO in recent years. 20 years.
“In addition to pointing to increasingly urgent environmental issues, Shirley Paes Leme reflects and gives visibility to the paradoxical situation of being in a kind of polluted oasis”, points out the curatorial text of the work written by Cauê Alves.
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Service:
Glass Room – Our world, by Shirley Paes Leme
Opening: 2 March, Thursday, at 19h
Exhibition period: 2 March to 28 May 2023
Local: Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Glass Room
Address: Ibirapuera park (Av. Pedro Álvares Cabral, s/nº – gates 1 and 3)
Timetables: Tuesday to Sunday, das 10h às 18h (with last admission at 5:30 pm)
Tickets: BRL 25.00 full and BRL 12.50 half price. On Sundays, Admission is free and visitors can contribute whatever amount they want.
*Half price for students, with identification; low-income youth and seniors (+60). Free for children under 10 years; people with disabilities and companion; teachers and directors of the state and municipal public network of São Paulo, with identification; MAM members and students; employees of partner companies and museums; ICOM members, HERE is ABCA, with identification; SPTuris employees and employees of the Municipal Secretariat of Culture.
Phone: (11) 5085-1300
Access for people with disabilities
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