Jacaranda - Nº 1

I. The pure word From 1986 to 1989, Lenora worked at the “Fol- In the beginning was the Word. The pure word on ha de São Paulo”, a big Brazilian newspaper –first as the page. It was the 70’s, and Lenora de Barros spent editor assistant, and afterwards as art editor, leading Profi le: Lenora de Barros hours in front of a typewriter waiting for a poem. the graphic renovation of the newspaper. When she left One of them occurred to her in her sleep. Lenora the office in downtown São Paulo to live in Milan – her *Audrey Furlaneto was a little over 20 years old and, again, spent hours husband, journalist Marcos Augusto Gonçalves, had been imagining how many poems she could write with the transferred to Italy as a correspondent for “Folha de São vast alphabet printed on her typewriter keys. It was Paulo” – she had time to, actually, dive into artistic pro- night when she decided to go to bed, and then, the duction. “That was when it became very clear to me that poem came – not as text, but as image: Lenora imag- my universe was not publications, but the space itself”. ined her tongue running through the typebars. The following day, her sister Fabiana de Barros, would take the pictures of what would be one of the first visual poems of the artist. The famous photogra- phy series “Poem” from 1979, serves as a metaphor to explain Lenora’s relationship with words – the artist uses them as a visual element (and not just discursive). “I’ve always wanted the word as an instrument, in an atomic form, in a minimal state”, she says. More than 30 years after the “Poem” experience, she has already swallowed, spat and hammered letters. She has paint- ed words on the soles of her feet, on the palms of her hands and on ping pong balls. She has made them jump from the pages, be heard through walls and, in the end, silenced them, chewing on her own tongue. But in the beginning was the word – and Lenora wrote poems, influenced by the concrete poets that used to go to her house, invited by her father, artist Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998). In 1975, the girl from Lenora de Barros São Paulo launched her verses on the magazine “Poe- sia em Greve” (“Poetry on Strike”). She also published there one of her best known works, “Homage to George Segal”. In it (a series of photographs, redone as video in the 80’s, under the direction of poet and video- maker friend Walter Silveira). In the video, Lenora brushes her teeth convulsively until she covers her whole head in white toothpaste foam, reminding the pathetic (and white) figures of the installation “Gas Station”, by George Segal, that the artist had seen years before in an exhibition at the São Paulo Biennial. Although “Poem” and “Homage to George Segal” already announced that Lenora would switch between words and images, the artist’s work spent the 80’s a bit restricted to paper publications. In that decade, se released her first book, “Onde se Vê” (“Where it’s Seen”, 1983), with 12 visual poems and the photography from “Homage to George Segal”. “I participated in exhibitions in the 80’s (the 17th São Paulo Biennial, in 1983, and in the Museum of Image and Sound, also in São Paulo, in 1982), but I thought more of publications. As I came from this path of poets, naturally I was using the same means, which was important, of course, because that was a moment when there weren’t many galleries, and things happened in these experimental magazines”, she recalls.

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II. The word in space associations between her researches and the foreigners’. Shortly after landing in Milan, Lenora was faced by Sometimes, she would fi ll her space in the newspaper with the word in the hands of painters and artists. She saw an ad visual performances in which she herself was the main in the newspaper about an exhibition called “Poesia Vi- character – by the way, something that is frequent in her siva”, result of the experiments of Italian artists with words. performances, both photographic and video ones. Lenora, then, saw the word get mixed with painting and She pictured herself, for example, with the most be converted into object-poem. “All that was very close to diverse hair styles, in the wheat-paste series “Procuro-me” what I did. I reheated the machine and restarted my work, (“Looking for Myself”). She established (silent) dialogues already thinking of exhibits, not publications anymore.” with Yoko Ono or Cindy Sherman – that continued in 2014, The exhibit came right away, in that same year of 1990, in the videos “Jogo de Damas” (“Checkers Game”) and “Em with “Poesia é coisa de nada” (“Poetry is nothing”), her fi rst Si as Mesmas” (“In Herself the Same”), where Lenora also individual show at Mercato del Sale, in Milan. The artist plays checkers with herself. “The column really changed covered the gallery fl oor with 5,000 ping pong balls, each one my life. It was a kind of studio, where I would retrace some with the phrase that names the exhibition. The word, then, paths and also fi nd new ones”, she recalls. In the follow- jumped from book into space. As Augusto de Campos wrote, ing moment, the word, then, seemed to dematerialize. her work “expanded from the written visual poetry into the open universe of videoforms, […] the visually intensifi ed word, brought up to the surface, word-body-identifi ed, materi- alized in sensorial biometaphors – face, gesture, light”. The stay in Milan, although short (not even two years), would be transformative. There, Lenora not only took the word into space, but also worked as a curator, organizing the exhibit “Poesia Concreta in Brasile”, at the Archivio della Grazia di Nuova Scrittura. In her own exhibition, she exploit- ed elements that would be cherished through the following decades, among them the ping pong balls or the idea of silence (a word that, as any other, produces sound and signifi cance). About the balls – or “ping poems”, as the artist named them –, they were included defi nitely into her work, reappear- Lenora de Barros ing in her trajectory in a game of coming and going that mimics ping pong itself. Upon her return to Brazil, in 1990, the balls came back to her studio and, in 1994, 10 thousand of them featured in the installation “Ácida Cidade” (“Acid City”), in the collective “Arte Cidade” in São Paulo. Later, in 2001, they took over the artist’s fi rst individual in Brazil, “O que que há de novo, de novo, pussyquete?” (“What’s up, again, pussycat?”), in Gal- lery Millan. In this case, they were stuck to ping pong paddles or in boxes, printed with the words “take me” or “weigh me”. “I started to notice that this ball could be a support and that, according to the text it received, it would have another meaning and would be in another context. I exploit this until I get to the individual at the Gallery Millan, in 2001. That’s when I had the perception that this repetition happened in other works. And maybe this happens because I like dealing with the change of context, see how the thing changes, how it reveals itself in diff erent forms. I like to see something getting a diff erent meaning when the context is changed”, she explains. In this sense, it was crucial for the artist to be able to investigate her own archive, make connections and estab- lish kinds of ping pong matches with other artists – some- thing that was granted to her by the column “…umas” (“… some”), that she wrote for “Jornal da Tarde” between 1993 and 1996. In her weekly space, Lenora invented many dialogues with distant artists, in a pre-Google era, tracing

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III. The bodiless word fectionately calls “a partner look”. In the series, she glass (and an ear) against the gallery wall, as if to listen to In 1998, Lenora took her tongue to the São Paulo Bi- mixes performances and poems, like in “Tato no Olho” the neighbor’s conversation. About the exposition, critic ennial, also known as the Anthropophagy Biennial. In that (“Touch in the Eye”), where she covers the eyes with Luisa Duarte wrote: “Note that they are bodiless words. 24th edition of the exhibit, curated by Paulo Herkenhoff, a coming and going of hands towards the face. The If poetry and performance have been part of the artist’s the artist exposed the photograph “Língua vertebral” gestures, quite violent, are followed by the poem: “A poetic repertoire for some time, the thought of radio over (“Vertebral Tongue”), where a tiny spine lays (like a jewel) mão que tapa o tato do olho não vê que olho não vive the last few years has entered her works and we can see in on her exposed tongue (as if in a scream). Or even the sem toque” (“The hand that covers the touch of the this exhibition the consequence of the entry of this new video “No país da língua grande, dai carne a quem quer eye doesn’t see that eye doesn’t live without touch”). tenant. (…) Nothing is shown to us and thus we are invited carne” (“In the big tongue country, give meat to those Also from the 2000’s are the photographs that to imagine, in the strong sense of the term.” Lenora also who want meat”), where she chewed her own tongue, make one of her most emblematic works, “Procuro-me”. saw there a “bodiless voice”. “This has always seemed a without saying anything – or just in an apparent silence. The work was born in 1994 in a shopping mall in São fascinating theme to me, that accompanies me since I cre- “Inside my universe, I see very clearly a situation Paulo, where the artist pictured herself using software ated Radiovisual, for the 7th Mercosul Biennial in 2009. discussed by John Cage, of saying without saying. From that allowed her to “wear” different wigs. At the time, Voices that are almost embodied and that have a pres- the beginning of my work, this is present, this situation she published the result in her column “…umas”. Later, ence as big as that of a person in front of you”, she says. of denial, of nothing, of silence. Since I was very young, in 2001, right after 9/11, when she saw President Bush Now completely bodiless – though not absent – I’ve been intrigued by the sentence: ‘I said nothing’. If you say on television that the culprits for the attack were Lenora’s word inspired an exposition in New York, where said nothing, you said the word nothing, right? This has “wanted – dead or alive”, she went back to self-portraits. the artist lived for a little over a year. “Ultrapassado”, title always intrigued me.” This is how, even dematerialized She had the idea of using them for the series “Procu- of a work Lenora presented in São Paulo in the 2000’s, (or not used directly as visual source of the work), the ro-me” and used the phrase as a title for police-like intrigued the owner of the gallery Broadway 1602, the word, in Lenora’s tongue, still has something to say. posters with her face printed on them. Exhibited in Rio German Anke Kempes. The word has various possible The videos produced for the Mercosul Biennial, de Janeiro and in São Paulo, the works gained visi- meanings (from exceed or transcend to overcome or leave in 2005, account for this silence full of significance, bility and were even vandalized by an art group that behind as something from the past). In the exhibition, and therefore, of word. Lenora named the series “Não claimed for “artistic purity” and other delusions. Lenora showed a chair with rearview mirrors where the quero nem ver” (“I don’t even want to see”) and, for But maybe the word has actually lost its body in visitors could sit, but back to back, so they couldn’t see the first time, took part in the editing of the videos, “Sonoplastia” (“Sonoplasty”), exhibition of 2001, in each other. In all, ten artists (four Brazilian), all somehow side by side with Luciano Mariussi, whom she af- Gallery Millan. Then, the artist invited the public to put a influenced by constructivism, exposed their works at the Lenora de Barros

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