Held in Bom Retiro, in São Paulo, a neighborhood characterized by constant territorial transformations and a strong multicultural vocation, the second edition of the URBE – Public Art Exhibition was held in November 2016, curated by Alessandra Marder, Felipe Brait e Reinaldo Botelho, and reinforced the essence of the project: the investigation of the public space through contemporary artistic practices, having as a curatorial axis the idea of Transversal City. Anaisa Franco, Iara Freiberg e Guto Requena were the three artists invited to create interventions based on the relationship between city, individuals and disputed territory, urban memory and the way in which places are created, invented and reinvented by the use. The objective of the exhibition was to reflect on the right to the city and to discuss new forms of occupation of the public space.
Sweet reflection, 2016 – by Anaisa Franco
Interactive artistic installation in parametric pavilion format. When entering the pavilion, the public could have their face photographed, mapped and transformed into chocolate and pancakes through 3-D printing technology. Some photos were later reproduced in adhesive format and applied to the external wall of the pavilion, creating the perception of a “hive” of faces. The project sought to rescue and map the multicultural origin of the neighborhood and its history of immigration in a temporary memorial built from the process of interaction of the public.
Anaisa Franco (Uberlândia, 1981)
Multimedia artist, designer, sculptor, draftsman. Graduated in plastic arts from the Fundação Armando Alvares Penteado and master in digital art and technology from the University of Plymouth (England). Works and exhibits in countries of America, Asia and Europe, participating in national and international exhibitions, since 2002, with works that explore the relationship between art and technology.
Tell me a secret?, 2016 – by Guto Requena
A work composed of a set of interactive urban furniture that sought to break the boundaries between design, architecture and urbanism through digital technologies. The project was born of a simple invitation to passers-by to share a secret of their intimacy. The statements, recorded anonymously, were successively stored and made available randomly in the “Chamber Collector of Secrets”, the centerpiece of the work. The project was completed by an activation of the rest of the furniture, through a reactive play of light and sound. All the furniture was painted with the colors of the flags of the countries of the main groups of immigrants that populated the Bom Retiro neighborhood.
Guto Requena (Sorocaba, 1979)
Architect and master in architecture from the University of São Paulo, Guto is a scholar in cyberculture and the impact of new technologies on architecture and design. He was a guest professor at institutions such as FAAP, PUC-RJ, Unicamp, USP, Belas Artes and Mackenzie. He was a columnist for the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo and currently develops design, architecture and urbanism series for television, cinema and the internet.
Fluctuation, 2016 – by Iara Freiberg
Fluctuation, by the artist Iara Freiberg, is an exercise that investigates the traditional volumes of the urban landscape. Markings drawn directly on architectural surfaces sometimes operate as grooves, voids and intervals, sometimes as provocations or invasions that traverse the traces of buildings, dismantling the composition and regular structure proper to the current urbanism. It derives from this a specialization that escapes from stability, determination of place and suggests movement, displacement to the intervention, a mixture of concreteness and abstraction. The work acts between temporality and spatiality, focusing mimetically on the place and reorienting the perception between depth and distance, proposing a positive void. It may seem like a dead end, but in an exercise of surrender it opens itself up to imaginary spaces, creates a place of new possibilities. Fluctuation deliberately diverts the idea of surface to another way of composing space.
Iara Freiberg (São Paulo, 1977)
Her work is characterized by the development of interventions intrinsically connected to architecture and relationships with space. Since 2002 she participates in exhibitions in Brazil and abroad. Idealizes and participates in special projects and independent initiatives, carrying out interventions in the public space, in unoccupied buildings and unconventional places. Won the Funarte contemporary art award in 2013 and the Iberê Camargo scholarship in 2006.