Exhibition "Tongue Kiss", by artist Nelson Felix

O MAC USP presents the exhibition French Kiss, artist's individual Nelson Felix (Rio de Janeiro, 1954), featuring dozens of works, including sculptures (some large-scale), drawings, photographs, and a video. The curator is Fernanda Pitta, a professor at MAC USP. The idea for the exhibition originated in 1978 when Nelson Felix, visiting the Andean region, noticed a coincidence between the Aymara language (spoken in the region) and Aramaic (from the Semitic tradition of the Middle East): written in Spanish, they become palindromes (Aemara and Aramea). Felix carried this thought for decades until he found in "Beijo de Língua" (Kiss of Tongue) the way to materialize it as one of the largest exhibitions ever held by the artist. "It's primarily an exhibition of sculptures," says Nelson.

In the central core of the exhibition, Felix presents three sculptures created from marble slabs. Sculpture for Homer, Sculpture for Saint Teresa, and Sculpture for Bertrand articulate three central themes in his work: sacrifice, tolerance, and love. The artist chose texts from three authors – Bertrand Russell, Homer, and Saint Teresa of Ávila – and some excerpts are written in Aymara and Aramaic on the marble slabs, creating a lacy surface on the stone. "Kiss of Tongue" features three sculptures, each formed from two marble slabs. The two slabs, glued together, contain the same text in two versions: on one side in Aymara and on the other in Aramaic.

– I glue these two plates with the texts together; incidentally, it's the first time I've used glue in my work. Here, the glue is as important a material as the marble itself, or the bronze, or even the plant elements I use. Thus, in the characters, mutual leaks emerge, the languages ​​touch; for me, it's like a kiss – says the artist.

“The surfaces touch, but maintain intervals where the languages ​​do not coincide. The glue highlights the operation that sustains the union without eliminating the difference. The text begins to act as matter, inscribed and articulated in the structure of the work,” observes curator Fernanda Pitta.

The work "Love Letter," presented in 2022 as a continuous project, now has two new sculptural versions: "Petal" and "Stem." The works feature diverse materials: marble, bronze, iron, steel cable, cactus, and silk thread. The series of drawings reveal different facets of Felix's work, with references to previous works and studies of current work. In the series "7 Empty Nights and 21 Days as 21 Years" (2024), we can see the same gesture, made with an oil stick, which is never the same twice. The graphic work "Homer's Turtle" (2024), a series of three works, references the verse from Homer (Homeric Hymn to Hermes), in which Hermes kills a turtle and creates the first lyre. For Felix, the creation of this instrument marks the birth of music.

According to the exhibition curator, "through the continuous process of resuming and rearticulating ideas, materials, and procedures, Nelson Felix's works cease to operate in isolation and begin to constitute a set of relationships, forming an open whole in which the works relate to each other through similarities and distances, between languages ​​and systems of thought, such as Aramaic and Aymara, the central axis of the exhibition."

Exhibition | French Kiss
From May 30th to November 20th
Tuesday to Sunday from 10 am to 21 pm