Paula Scamparini
© Paula Scamparini
Traditionally exhibitions display a body of work that is amputated from a larger historical interest and inquiry. The work appears on walls, in spaces, or on screens with very little context to the expressive world outside. At times there is a curatorial text giving some historical information on the artist (author). The text may even attempt to place the work in a broader image-making context within a particular framework or paradigm. This construct, being useful but limited in scope, provides the reader of the images (image as text, text as image) a platform from which to consider the exhibition and the work of both the curator and artist/author. When this is the case the responsibility for conceptuality of the exhibition lies with the view/reader and their interpretive frame. It cannot be overlooked that exhibitions are the intellectual and political work of curators. Curators define their landscape through the work they select, organize and display. Reputations and status are related to institutional standing as well as the artist on view. Curators are also hunters following the scent of innovation and expression.
The VASA exhibition by the Brazilian artist Paula Scamparini places two bodies of work, Palavas (2012) and Munchen (2015), framed within voice of the artist, the author of the images. Giving authors a voice to contextualize inquires not only places the exhibition in a continuum but speaks to the broader constellation of creative efforts. This framing of the work provides a different perspective, signifying another referent. Through the inclusion of a video conversation (in this exhibition) with Paula the artist and author is voicing her intentions and interest. In the process she reveals her creative, emotional and cognitive self. (Left image screen grab: Paula Scamparini web site, http://paulascamparini.com/)
What the video conversation reveals is a consistent and committed inquiry into expressive formats from photography, video, sculpture and performance. What cements her inquires, while crossing borders between traditional media, is a baseline for communication: narratives, text and language. Progressing from photography, paper based written text and video, Paula begins to address the speech of others and the construction of “a” history constructed through school textbooks that addresses the relationship between Portugal and Brazil. Here she invited the viewers to become participants by walking upon the ceramic tiles she created which displayed the text and images found in Portuguese elementary school textbooks. The gesture of walking destroyed the tiles representing the manner that the colonialist consumed, modified, and in many cases eliminated the indigenous. The exhibition announced a shift from her inquiry into personal identity through text and image to cultural identity. Her inquires arrives at the point where she created another installation using a video of an indigenous man telling his story of his land in his own language to be repeated by non- indigenous “white” men who did not understand the culture or the language – in short, they, the invaders and colonialist had no idea what he (the indigenous) was saying.
A recent project in Portugal (2016) engaged Portuguese participants to mold clay on their upper leg, creating roof tiles using that matched their skin color. (This was a process where slaves were used to produce roof tiles.) Here Paula related her work in cultural identity to questions and inquires that emerged earlier in her investigations.
Screen grab with permission from
Paula Scamparini web site, http://paulascamparini.com/
Clearly every exhibition, every work of art or image construction functions on many levels of representation. This ranges from self-referential to the emblematic. Emblematic in that there are layers of referents that may be combined to construct meanings for the reader. It is important to point out that the “author” of the text (referring to text as being produced physically – for example a photograph or a painting – or cognitively – as Stieglitz imposed on his clouds the idea of equivalents or the social reading of “The Steerage” – constructed meaning to be read) encodes the experience and at the same time decodes it. The author becomes a reader of her own text. Consider the writing and editing process of a written text or the selection and framing of an image. In both cases the author becomes a reader and the reader becomes an author. It is a question of representation and meaning.
The inquires of Paula Scamparini is a demonstration of a persistent pursuit by an artist into the emblematic nature of meaning. She challenges us, as readers, to collaborate with her, to be authors of our own text.
(Image: Alfred Steglitz "The Steerage" Wikipedia Creative Commons)
© Roberto Muffoletto, 2017