“Viver até o fim o que me cabe!” – Sidney Amaral: aproximação

From March 10 to September 4, 2021, the Sesc São Paulo unit in the city of Jundiaí (about 50 km from the state capital) is presenting Viver até o fim o que me cabe! – Sidney Amaral: aproximação [Let me live my due! – Sidney Amaral: Approaching]. The show, curated by visual artist and teacher Claudinei Roberto da Silva, features an important selection of the vast production of Sidney Amaral (1973–2017), a Brazilian artist whose life was cut tragically short.

As a black man and teacher in the São Paulo public school system, Amaral was not aloof to the urgent demands of our time, and had firsthand knowledge of the problems that directly affect the “minimized majorities” of Brazil, notably the black women and men beset by historic and structural racism. His artistic engagement with these urgent questions influenced his aesthetic and ethical choices, without, however, diminishing the rigor or poetic density of his work. “On the contrary,” the curator states, “it contributed to the densification of his proposals.”

With works that transit between drawing, painting and sculpture, as well as artist’s notebooks and works in process, the exhibition sheds light on the artist’s versatility and skill in the use of a wide range of techniques and materials, always with great density and accurate social criticism. Self-portrayed in part of his iconographic production, the artist recurrently made use of his own body to graphically and pictorially stage ambiguous and uncomfortable situations.

Born into a working-class family, in the periphery of the city of São Paulo’s north zone, Sidney Amaral showed an interest in art from a young age. In the 1990s, he studied academic painting with Pedro Alzaga. He also immersed himself in drawing and photography and, in 1998, received his BA in art education from Fundação Armando Alvarez Penteado (FAAP)—where he studied on a grant won at an exhibition of work by students, held annually by the college.

His constant search for knowledge and improvement led to his participation, in 2012, in an artist-in-residency program at Tamarind Institute, in New Mexico (USA), where he developed printmaking skills, producing various lithographs while enjoying intense dialogue with local artists. In 2016, he participated in another artist-in-residency program, this time in the International Workshop in Gludsted, Denmark.

Starting in 1994, Sidney Amaral participated in solo and group shows. In 2006, he took part in the show Viva Cultura Viva do Povo Brasileiro curated by Emanoel Araújo, at the then recently inaugurated Museu Afro Brasil. In 2014, he was one of the artists representing Brazil’s at the 11th Dakar Biennale, and, that same year, was among the artists featured in the exhibition Histórias Mestiças, curated by Adriano Pedrosa and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz, at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, in São Paulo.

His work was presented posthumously in 2018, at the group show Histórias Afro-Atlânticas, at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and at Instituto Tomie Ohtake, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Ayrson Heráclito, Hélio Menezes, Lilia Moritz Schwarcz and Tomás Toledo. And, in September of that same year the first posthumous solo show by the artist, A vontade foi demais, was held at Galeria Pilar, in São Paulo, curated by Claudinei Roberto da Silva.

The title of the current exhibition at Sesc Jundiaí refers to the poem, “I Love,” written in 1922 by Russian/Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930). As the show’s curator explains, “Sidney Amaral was devoted to poetry in general and especially to this poet. Whenever asked, he would recite the verses he had read so many times. Coincidentally, the two artists shared certain similarities, including an extreme love for life and a sincere desire for their works to contribute to the emergence of a world where the differences between all people would be surpassed by an ideal of justice and equality.”

At this moment, in-person visits to exhibitions at units of Sesc São Paulo are only possible through prior scheduling online and in accordance with the protocols established by the local authorities for the combat of COVID-19.