17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil
Southern Panoramas announces award winners
The Lebanese artist Akram Zaatari is the grand winner of the 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil with his video Tomorrow everything will be alright, a story of love, loss, and longing reminiscent of the universe of French filmmaker Éric Rohmer. Artists from Brazil, South America, Europe, and Asia won the eight residency prizes, granted by the Festival in partnership with institutions based in three continents, and three works received honorable mentions.The Festival jury included Agustín Pérez Rubio, director of the MUSAC (Contemporary Art Museum of Castilla y León), in Spain; Bisi Silva, founder of CCA Lagos (Center for Contemporary Art), in Nigeria; Gabriela Salgado, an independent curator specializing in Latin America; Rodrigo Moura, curator of Instituto Inhotim (Brumadinho, state of Minas Gerais); and Raquel Schwartz, director of Galeria Kiósko in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia.
The Southern Panoramas exhibition will be at SESC Belenzinho, São Paulo, through December 8, 2011.
The 17th Festival winners are:
GRAND PRIZE
Akram Zaatari (Lebanon, 1966)
Tomorrow everything will be alright, 2010
During an intense exchange of ideas over the course of an evening, a story of love, loss, and nostalgia unfolds. This work is a tribute of sorts to the French filmmaker Éric Rohmer.
RESIDENCY PRIZES
FAAP ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
Moran Shavit (Israel/Germany, 1982)
Exploring, 2010
Upon revisiting, in her adult life, the correspondence that she exchanged with her father while he was working on an ocean tanker, the artist rearticulates geographic and subjective spaces.
FAAP ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – SÃO PAULO, BRAZIL
Natasha Mendonca (India, 1978)
Jan Villa, 2010
Mixing documentary and personal memories, this work portrays the flood-stricken Indian city of Mumbai after the monsoon of 2005. Revisiting her neighborhood, from which the work takes its name, the artist analyses the crumbling of personal sanctuaries.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – SACATAR – ITAPARICA, BRAZIL
Claudia Joskowicz (Bolivia/USA, 1968)
Round and round and consumed by fire, 2009
A single slow panoramic shot, this piece is inspired by a scene from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in which the duo is surrounded by the Bolivian police.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – KIOSKO – SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, BOLIVIA
Adriano Costa (Brazil-SP, 1975)
Tapetes, 2010
The artist appropriates everyday objects and arranges them in a fashion he describes as “pre-sculptoric,” to explore the undefined moment in which something has not yet been defined as art.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – KIOSKO – SANTA CRUZ DE LA SIERRA, BOLIVIA
Liu Wei (China, 1965)
Unforgettable Memory, 2009
An attempt at recovering the memory of 1989, when the Chinese took to the streets to protest against Deng Xiaoping’s government, the work questions the power of memory in the face of indifference.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – VIDEOFORMES – CLERMONT-FERRAND, FRANCE
Gabriel Mascaro (Brazil-PE, 1983)
As aventuras de Paulo Bruscky, 2010
This work stages a virtual encounter between Mascaro and Brazilian artist Paulo Bruscky on the Second Life networking platform. The conversation brings up issues regarding the nature of cultural manifestations and the possibilities of digital space.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – WBK VRIJE ACADEMIE – THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS
Dirceu Maués (Brazil-PA/DF, 1968)
Em um lugar qualquer – Outeiro, 2009
Images produced using pinhole cameras made of matchboxes provide the foundation to this animation, which rebuilds the landscape of the Outeiro beach, in Belém do Pará. An affection-ridden, timeless aesthetics emerges from the operation.
ARTISTIC RESIDENCY PRIZE – PARTAGE – FLIC-EN-FLAC, MAURITIUS
Carla Zaccagnini (Argentina/Brazil-SP, 1973)
Bravo-Radio-Atlas-Virus-Opera, 2010
A real-time projection displays footage of a transoceanic crossing via the Panama Canal. The vessel surges into view enframed by water, but otherwise decontextualized. The work articulates natural scenery with human action.
HONORABLE MENTIONS
Sebastián Diaz Morales (Argentina/Holland, 1975)
Oracle, 2009
Seemingly random and unrelated images alternate in a mosaic under construction that alludes to the Greek tradition of the oracle. The prediction resides in the viewer’s own capacity to ascribe meaning to a complex web of symbols.
Eder Santos (Brazil-MG, 1960)
Pilgrimage, 2010
Based on the route travelled by iron ore, which it follows from extraction to export, this work reinvents the quality of the event, reviewing the nature-culture relationship.
Milton Machado (Brazil-RJ, 1947) and Cacá Vicalvi (Brazil-SP, 1953)
Vermelho, 2009
Part of a research by Machado involving images and objects from a furniture factory transposed onto a gallery, the piece points to relations between realms that are theoretically separate.
The 17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil is an undertaking of Associação Cultural Videobrasil (www.videobrasil.org.br) and SESC São Paulo (www.sescsp.org.br).
17th International Contemporary Art Festival SESC_Videobrasil
SESC Belenzinho
SESC Pompeia
Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo State Art Gallery)
September 2011–January 2012
São Paulo, Brazil
