Espressioni. The Proposition. Uýra Sodoma, Performance
Florestas que dormem sob o asfalto (The forests that sleep under the asphalt)
Saturday July 17, 2021, 3 – 3.30 pm
Atrium, Castello di Rivoli
As part of Espressioni. The Proposition, a project investigating histories of art to expand the traditional canons of “expression” related to European artistic movements, Saturday 17 July at 3 pm Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea presents the performance of the indigenous artist Emerson Uýra (Santarém, Brazil, 1991) entitled Florestas que dormem sob o asfalto (The forests that sleep under the asphalt, 2021), in anticipation of the artist’s participation in the 34th Biennale of Sao Paulo (September 4 – December 5, 2021). The artist intertwines the ancestral wisdom of the peoples of Brazil with the canonical scientific and biological knowledge of modernity, evoking lost properties and memories relating to plants and the beings that inhabit them. Uýra Sodoma looks like a ‘walking tree’, a hybrid entity whose appearance is constantly evolving, just like nature.
After being presented at the Kunstraum Innsbruck on 10 July 2021, Florestas que dormem sob o asfalto becomes a moment where Uýra Sodoma embracing the specificity of the flora of the Susa Valley. “Under the view of worlds that insist on everything being straight,” the artist states, “the seed claims the right to make curves.” It has just arrived. It is sleeping and Uýra Sodoma wakes it, drawing its shape on the stone of the Juvarra atrium, watering it to move the forest under the ground. According to the artist it is movement and metamorphosis the truly pulsating and potential spirit of all living beings.
The photographic documentation of the performance at the Castello di Rivoli will be presented on the occasion of Espressioni. The Epilogue, which will open to the public on November 4, 2021.
Biography
Emerson Uýra (Santarém, Brazil, 1991) is a performer, biologist and teacher from the Amazonian city of Santarém, Brazil. He uses art as a tool to disclose the indigenous environment. Uýra has participated in various exhibitions such as Salão Arte Paraná, VII edition of the EDP Prêmio at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, Instituto Moreira Salle or Museu de Arte in Rio de Janeiro. Through the alter ego Uýra Sodoma, the artist travels in the river communities of the region teaching and promoting the protection of the environment. Uýra Sodoma was born in 2016, when the artist decides to expand his university research and seek new ways of acting to bring the debate on ecological conservation to the communities of Manaus and its surroundings. In biology lectures or in photographic performances, in make-up and camouflage, in texts and installations, Uýra Sodoma talks speaks of the forest and with the forest.