Acclimatization Garden
2022
Acclimatization Garden
Silkscreen and low-relief engraving on concrete. 40 x 65 x 3 cm.
2022
During my residency at Delfina Foundation (2022) in London, I dedicated myself to investigating a specific question that has been permeating my work for some time now: how did the Brazilian modernist program update and perpetuate narratives that befit the colonial heritages in Brazil, from buildings to its public debating platforms (such as publications and exhibitions)?
![EXPO 58.]()
![Brazil Builds. MoMA. 1943.]()
With this question in mind, I opted to search for catalogs and exhibition files that proposed to present the modernist production from Brazilian architecture to the global North mid-20th century. Throughout this process, I had my attention drawn to the way vegetation was articulated in the exhibition space in some of these exhibitions. In EXPO 58’s Brazilian pavilion (Brussels, 1958) [1], tropical plants “compete” with architectural photography, whereas in “Brazil Builds” (New York, 1943) they are presented on displays just like the architectural models, leaving from a purely ornamental domain to an exhibition domain.
The astonishing presence of a series of exotic vegetations in the global North, in exhibitions that proposed, fundamentally, to recount an idea of “Brazil”, seem to clash with the images of the transformations that were going on through that period in the country, such as the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the inner parts of Brazil and the progress of huge construction works like the Belém-Brasília highway. In a nutshell, we are talking about processes that were frequently associated with the fable making of the western civilization myth, in which the white man performed domination through the domestication of nature [2].
Thus, the appropriation of tropical plants at these exhibitions would be symptomatic of the neocolonial dynamics in Brazil at that time. Considering the fetish for the domestication of such species inside the planned spaces of modernist architecture, the argument of domination over anything or anyone considered savage was veiled. Perhaps those exhibition spaces tried to simulate the logic of the acclimatization gardens in Europe, structures that not only adapted tropical species to the European cold weather but also symbolized the vast colonial domination through the diversity of species extracted from several territories. The Brazil which strived to adapt the modernist repertoire to the tropics also tried to come out as the Brazil capable of articulating its own acclimatization garden with species from its own territory, as a symbol of its auto-colonial corporation.
In that sense, during my time at Delfina I started to study the subtraction of architectural references present in photographs from these exhibitions without interfering with the presence of the vegetation in the spaces, trying to outline how the presence of these elements happensnot as an arbitrary act, but as a central element to maintain a certain narrative.
2022
During my residency at Delfina Foundation (2022) in London, I dedicated myself to investigating a specific question that has been permeating my work for some time now: how did the Brazilian modernist program update and perpetuate narratives that befit the colonial heritages in Brazil, from buildings to its public debating platforms (such as publications and exhibitions)?
With this question in mind, I opted to search for catalogs and exhibition files that proposed to present the modernist production from Brazilian architecture to the global North mid-20th century. Throughout this process, I had my attention drawn to the way vegetation was articulated in the exhibition space in some of these exhibitions. In EXPO 58’s Brazilian pavilion (Brussels, 1958) [1], tropical plants “compete” with architectural photography, whereas in “Brazil Builds” (New York, 1943) they are presented on displays just like the architectural models, leaving from a purely ornamental domain to an exhibition domain.
The astonishing presence of a series of exotic vegetations in the global North, in exhibitions that proposed, fundamentally, to recount an idea of “Brazil”, seem to clash with the images of the transformations that were going on through that period in the country, such as the expansion of the agricultural frontier in the inner parts of Brazil and the progress of huge construction works like the Belém-Brasília highway. In a nutshell, we are talking about processes that were frequently associated with the fable making of the western civilization myth, in which the white man performed domination through the domestication of nature [2].
Thus, the appropriation of tropical plants at these exhibitions would be symptomatic of the neocolonial dynamics in Brazil at that time. Considering the fetish for the domestication of such species inside the planned spaces of modernist architecture, the argument of domination over anything or anyone considered savage was veiled. Perhaps those exhibition spaces tried to simulate the logic of the acclimatization gardens in Europe, structures that not only adapted tropical species to the European cold weather but also symbolized the vast colonial domination through the diversity of species extracted from several territories. The Brazil which strived to adapt the modernist repertoire to the tropics also tried to come out as the Brazil capable of articulating its own acclimatization garden with species from its own territory, as a symbol of its auto-colonial corporation.
In that sense, during my time at Delfina I started to study the subtraction of architectural references present in photographs from these exhibitions without interfering with the presence of the vegetation in the spaces, trying to outline how the presence of these elements happensnot as an arbitrary act, but as a central element to maintain a certain narrative.