Work by artist Josi, in the exhibition 'drag floors, gather imbigos'. Photo: Eduardo Fraipont
Work by artist Josi, in the exhibition 'drag floors, gather imbigos'. Photo: Eduardo Fraipont

Áblack bean water, earth of different colors and textures, saffron, tapioca starch, bamboo, charcoal, mango leaves, banana seed, bird grass, eucalyptus and so on. These and several other elements serve as the basis for the paintings and sculptures of artist Josi from Minas Gerais, who presents the exhibition in São Paulo dragging floors, gathering obstacles, at the Mendes Wood DM gallery, until August 10th.

This is not, to be clear, a simple interest on Josi's part in different materials from nature, or even the research of someone who is “curious” about elements from different environments. Born in Vale do Jequitinhonha and raised part of her life in Caeté, until more recently settling in Belo Horizonte, Josi has an almost “intertwining” relationship with these subjects, as the exhibition’s curator explains. Galciani Neves. “For Josi, it is very consistent with the way she sees the world and the pacts of life that she uses these materials that are within reach, with which she has already lived since she was a child.”

This is even clear in the terms used by the 41-year-old artist to talk about her – reasonably recent – ​​trajectory in the artistic world. “My work is a survey of a recent boil, but of something that has been gathering heat for many years. And this boiling is very linked to the beans”, she says. Working as an educator in the public school system since she was young and later graduating in Literature – in the first generation with a higher education degree in her family –, Josi decided to study art at Guignard School, from UEMG, in 2017. And shortly afterwards came the story of beans, during a period in which I was studying painting with professor Thereza Portes.

One day in 2020, when he was cooking in a pressure cooker, he saw some kind of dirt leaking out. Observing that bluish liquid, which slowly changed to more greenish or purplish tones, she realized the potential of this pigment for her paintings. And so began a long research that Josi relates to the idea of ​​“reverse quarar” – which even became the title of his first solo exhibition, in 2022 at Fiat House (Belo Horizonte).

Quarar, a verb that may sound old-fashioned – or is even unknown – to many, refers to techniques for removing stains from clothes and cloths, generally linked to exposure to the sun. In short, something made to bleach items with stains caused by domestic use. For Josi, accustomed to using this process throughout her life, the idea now, however, is to create appearances, not the other way around. “So that guides me to research pigment. Everything that stains clothes I will look for to bring to my painting. So in the exhibition you will find many materials that stain clothes, such as banana navel sap, which impregnates, watery soil, which can be anything from thin water to clay, and so on.”

Density of people

The fact is that the entire explanation about working with materials and pigments only makes sense due to its direct connection with the themes and subjects that arise in the works. Whether in paintings or sculptures, bodies and faces – generally of people, but sometimes of other beings – appear densely packed, marking their presence and opposing erasure. Once again, they are settlements, types of “reverse squares”, but now of beings. “When I talk a lot about process, materials, it’s because this subject also draws a lot from these themes. (…) There are a lot of people there, you know, a lot of braided people”, she jokes. “And as water is a great partner in my painting, one might think that there is also a watery mess of people. Sometimes from one person’s line comes another.”

Reversing erasures, as identified by Galciani, who lived with the artist in recent years, is also directly linked to Josi's life story, which encompasses presences, but also many absences and disconnections. “Her work happens in a way that is very connected with history and her family, with the place where she was born, where she lives, and the place where these people who came before are, from that ancestry to which she is very close. This is all very expensive and important for Josi.”

The body – represented in the works – and the territory – raw material of production – appear fused in the work. The supposed separation between nature and culture, common to Western thought, is replaced by a great fusion, in a production that starts much more from associations, connections and ancestries than from separations and categorizations. “Man is not devoid of nature”, highlights Galciani, adding that for Josi none of this is just discourse or theory: “There is no such split, this is rooted in her work. She is telling a story where the body is completely implicated and engaged in place. So much so that this place 'materially' comes to work.”

Josi's second solo show, now in one of the largest galleries in the country, shows that the “fervency” of her production was rapid, leaving the artist sometimes even insecure. But as she herself says, her story and her “movements” are old, which is clear from the title of the exhibition itself: it is a whole life of dragging floors, gathering obstacles, that is, to work with your hands, to observe and act in the world on a daily basis. “So I think it's a very beautiful meeting between the dynamics of what makes up a work of art: a political instance, an ethical instance, a technical instance. Her work combines this in practice, in the encounter with the place and its times and with materialities”, concludes Galciani.

 


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