View of the exhibition “Parallel Existences - Collection in (De)construction”

Efrain Almeida (1964 – 2024), who died prematurely last year, is one of the most recognized names in Brazilian contemporary art. Born in the Canindé hinterland of Ceará, he is not represented in the collection of the Pinacoteca do Ceará, which was inaugurated three years ago by bringing together several public collections.

Efrain's absence from the Pinacoteca ended up generating a special tribute in the exhibition "Parallel Existences – Collection in (De)construction," conceived to rethink a public collection. With 484 works by 63 artists from Ceará with local and national recognition, popular and contemporary, historical and unknown, the exhibition is divided into five modules.
One of them, Votive Forms and Celebrations, revisits Efrain's poetics, marked by autobiographical traits and traversed by elements of Northeastern culture, to produce an intense dialogue with other manual productions, such as that of Maria de Lourdes Cândido Monteiro (1939-2021), who in Juazeiro do Norte dedicated herself to working with clay, earning the title of Master of Culture in 2004, shared with her daughters and granddaughters.

The various works by Efrain, who also shares the module with another renowned contemporary, such as José Leonilson (1957 – 1993), in dialogue with artists generally considered “popular,” such as Maria de Lourdes and Nice Firmeza, point to how the exhibition avoids reductive aesthetic categories to consider what belongs in a public museum and re-proposes the constitution of a public collection based on a rather disruptive curatorial organization.

Parallel Existences was conceived by a curatorial trio composed of Lisette Lagnado, José Eduardo Ferreira Santos (Acervo da Lage – Bahia) and Yuri Firmeza, who in turn share the curatorship with researchers and leaders from territories and communities in different regions of Ceará: Débora Soares and Ismael Gutemberg, from the Cultural Heritage Center of Moura Brasil (Nupac); Diêgo di Paula, Acervo Mucuripe; Dona Toinha, Quilombo Água Preta, in Tururu; Paula Machado, Minimuseu Firmeza, in the Mondubim neighborhood; and Tercio Araripe, Grupo Uirapuru Orquestra de Barro, from Moita Redonda.
Based on these conjunctions, the exhibition rethinks the Pinacoteca's collection in an organization "through the approximation of the sublime ordinary that has always been on the margins and, at the same time, has always been resistant and political, keeping alive the memory and aspirations of a people and their territory," says Rian Fontenele, the institution's general director.

The architectural space, one of the highlights of the exhibition, was designed in collaboration with architect Tiago Guimarães, drawing inspiration from the furniture typically found in a museum's storage area, such as map cabinets and shelves. The suspended panels, erected in parallel lines, which evoke the exhibition's title and are located in the center of the space, are made of a translucent green material similar to file folders, lending lightness and vitality to the ensemble. On the white side walls, the artworks are arranged at three different heights, alluding to the classification system of a storage area.

One of the curatorial principles was to avoid the canon, starting with already recognized names in search of gaps, especially those of women, who are known to be a minority in all art museums, whether in Ceará, the rest of the country, or even the world. Furthermore, the artists who represent the canon in Ceará, such as Antonio Bandeira, Aldemir Martins, Chico da Silva, and José Leonilson, have already been featured in major exhibitions during these three years of the Pinacoteca.

Among the first strong presences is that of Telma Saraiva and her photo-paintings. In fact, she is currently exhibiting at the Rio Art Museum in a stunning solo show, curated by Bitu Cassundé. Her images even reenact Hollywood icons, many of them featuring their children.

Telma is featured in the Modes of Production and Circulation module, which addresses an experimental circuit that, at the same time, has a strong presence in Ceará, especially in the Cariri region. There, woodcut printing has a long tradition, "whether through the Boletim Caricata, at the beginning of the 20th century, or through José Bernardo da Silva and the Tipografia São Francisco, a predecessor of Lira Nordestina," states Yuri Firmeza in one of the exhibition texts.

Territorial memories

The research for the exhibition, which opened last May, began in November 2023 and included visits to different regions, and several meetings were held with the aim of learning about the diversity of "informal art gallery" initiatives, as José Eduardo Ferreira Santos calls them. For him, "establishing a relationship between art and territory is an unavoidable premise when one wants to trace and support movements that are historically important in the sociocultural formation of Ceará."
Territorial Memories, therefore, is a module that fosters dialogue with the Água Preta Cultural Collection (Tururu), the Cultural Heritage Center – NUPAC (Moura Brasil), the Firmeza Mini-Museum (Mondubim), and the Mucuripe Collection (Mucuripe).

The exhibition also problematizes the notion of modernity by revisiting issues addressed by Lina Bo Bardi and all her research on popular art during her time as head of the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia. This debate is particularly present in the Popular Modern module. In it, “an affective method is attempted, bringing into contact pieces sculpted in wood, some of still unidentified authorship, with, for example, white reliefs made from hammock handles by Heloysa Juaçaba and the playful constructivism of Roberto Galvão,” explains Lisette Lagnado in another text from the exhibition.

Finally, the fifth module is called Documentary Miscellany, and it is dedicated to researching the work of artists such as Maria Laura Mendes, who is mentioned in newspaper articles from the 1930s, but is not included in the collection, nor have any of her works been located. Documentation ended up being the only way to address these absences. “All history is made of gaps and erasures. It is in this sense that the documentary presence of Maria Laura Mendes constitutes a courageous gesture and a call to action,” explains Firmeza.
Last October, the Pinacoteca do Ceará hosted the seminar "Singular Lives, Collective Memories," organized by Lagnado in conjunction with the institution, to delve deeper into certain themes of the exhibition, featuring both nationally renowned figures such as Moacir dos Anjos and Marcelo Campos, as well as local leaders like Levi Nunes and Sérgio Rocha. All three panels are available on YouTube.

More than discussing a collection, Parallel Existences is an exhibition that, without telling a single story of art in Ceará or pretending to represent it in its entirety, fosters debates and inclusions outside the established canons, seeking to consolidate the institution by creating links with the territory it occupies. For this very reason, it deserves to be seen in other states, considering the breadth of Ceará's artistic production and the practice of shared curatorship as a form of territorial listening.


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