Cinthia Marcelle
475 VOLVER [TO COME TO], 2009
Brasil
Video, 8’16’’ in loop, color, sound
One JCB machine goes through the form of an infinite symbol transporting dirt from one side to the other and then repeats the movement from that side back to the other, like a kind of enlarged sand filled hour glass that never stops rotating.
Cinthia Marcelle
A herdeira, 2011
Inkjet on cotton Hahnemuhle 310g paper
This image, “The heiress” is taken from Cintha Marcelle’s latest solo exhibit at Vermelho, called “Zero for conduct”, in May 2011.
Cinthia Marcelle
BIG BUM, 2005
Local fluorescent lights, cords, connectors, clocks with continuous hand
Brasil
Cinthia Marcelle
CONFRONTO [CONFRONT] from the series Unus Mundus, 2005
Video, 7’50’’ in loop, color, sound
Brasil
8 jugglers are found simultaneously on a crosswalk, provoking noise made by cars that are eager to go through the traffic light. Ever two acrobats get onto the street in order to make a barrier under the green traffic light. The power of the fire and the acrobat’s skills challenge the loud horn of the cars. How many jugglers are playing with fire on a crosswalk right now?
Cinthia Marcelle
CRUZADA [CRUSADE], 2010
Video, 8’36’’ in loop, color, sound
Sixteen musicians come from the four extremities of a cross, 4 from each side, wearing 4 colors: yellow, red, blue and green. The four groups (one with the ride cymbals, one with the snare and bass drums, one with the trumpets and trombones and one with the baritone saxhorns and tubas) each one at a time, come into action, playing the sounds in a chaotic way until they’ve reached the crossing point of the cross. When they all meet, face to face, they begin a duel, which ends up in a choreography where the musicians exchange places, forming then four music bands of colors and mixed instruments. At the sound of the same song finally in harmony, the musicians leave the crossing point, each one at a time and spread around, through the four ways of the cross.
From the crossing of colors and sounds, a new language is born and with it, a crusade of a new community that is yet to come. “Crusade” is a piece of work that subverts, through the marginalization of rules and games, the aesthetical politics which is the face of the 20th century, the large mass choreography. An aesthetical subversion that proposes a sensitive revolution: from the cacophonic and kaleidoscopic duel of colorsand sounds in a crossing, harmony is born, a melody that seems to stimulate everyone around the world. “Crusade” is the last video from a trilogy that deals with origins, time and civilization.
Cinthia Marcelle
FONTE 193 [FOUNTAIN 193], 2007
Video, 5’40’’ in loop, color, sound
Brasil
One firefighter truck constantly drives in a perfect circle with its hose shooting water to the centre of the geometric figure, provoking the image of a fountain in reverse. This project was realized in collaboration with the Fire Department of Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
Cinthia Marcelle
MARCO ZERO [ZERO LANDMARK], 2007
Bricklayers, bricks, cement, scaffold, calcareous rock, wheelbarrow, tools, food
Museu de Arte Moderna, Recife, Brasil
Performance, 40’
Five bricklayers are in charge of demolishing a construction – a solid and closed room, built by the same men, in the center of the exhibition space. The sides of this room reproduce, in an inverted way, the walls of the gallery; the roof mirrors the architecture of the place. Inside the room there is a calcareous rock (commonly used in constructions of the region) that is isolated in the center of a scaffold. The workmen occupy the space by hanging their clothes, taking their tools out of boxes and marking some spots on the walls to begin the demolition. The walls are destroyed revealing the scaffold that surrounds the monolith and showing a kind of inverted sculpture. The workmen rest. Some lie down on the floor, others have lunch close to the wall, another one turns on a small radio. The group starts working again by disassembling the scaffold in order to take out the stone. They leave the room taking it in a wheelbarrow. They walk on the street towards a bridge where the rock is thrown into the water.
Cinthia Marcelle
O FAZEDOR [THE MAKER], 2007
Recycled paper, speakers
Brasil, installation, Box4 Gallery
Half ton of used paper had been screw up and threw in the room indicating the counting of the days. Under this paper mountain, two speakers reproduce the noise of someone - The Maker - that supposedly is inside, working (and screwing up papers) all the time.
Cinthia Marcelle
O Sábio (The wise one), 2009
Photograph
80 x 120 cm
Cinthia Marcelle
Sobre este mesmo mundo [This same world over], 2010
Erased blackboard, eraser, chalk powder
120 x 840 x 12 cm
Cinthia Marcelle
Sobre este mesmo mundo [This same world over], 2010
Erased blackboard, eraser, chalk powder
120 x 840 x 12 cm
Cinthia Marcelle
Temporário 5, 2011
Storefront window, aluminum, mirror and adhesive tape
Cinthia Marcelle
Utopic Reserve, 2011
Bricks, concrete, earth, and plants
Dimensions variable
One-Person Show | Artist Information
Cinthia Marcelle
*1974, Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Lives and works in Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Cinthia Marcelle graduated in Fine Arts from the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. Her work has been commissioned for major group exhibitions, including the Bienal de la Habana (2006), Biennale de Lyon (2007), Panorama da Arte Brasileira (2007), and Bienal de São Paulo (2010). She was awarded the International Prize for Performance, Trento (2006); the Annual TrAIN Artist in Residency award at Gasworks, London (2009); and The Future Generation Art Prize, Kiev (2010).
For Art Positions the artist will present a statement that starts out from the idea of an 'empty plot' to propose an occupation that serves as a utopian reserve – something like an island, if we consider how much this geographical concept finds itself historically associated with the idea of Utopia. According to Brazilian legislation, the owners of these empty plots are obliged to build a fence or wall around them in order to prevent them from being invaded, which in turn results in the growth of a spontaneous and entropic area, a kind of natural invasion from the inside to the outside.
Cinthia Marcelle
Utopic reserve, 2011
Installation made of bricks and wild grass (capim)
The project comes from the idea of “lote vago” (empty plot), a term used by the Brazilian public system referring to temporarily idle spaces, to propose an occupation that serves as a “Utopic Reserve” at the Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 – something like an island, if we think how much this geographical concept finds itself historically associated to the idea of utopia. According to the Brazilian legislation, the owner of these empty plots are obliged build a fence or wall around them in order to prevent them from being invaded, which in return results in a growth of an spontaneous and entropic area, a kind of natural invasion from the inside to the outside, being the capim the leading character.
From tupi origins (ka+píi, or “thin leaf”), the capim is a generic designation for the Brazilian wild graminoids. Able to proliferate in any kind of soil (or even on paved areas), undesired, invader, even though it’s easily removed, the capim is a sign of the green areas that became green by default, from the residual public areas, places that work as a compensation for the disorganized urban growth. Even though it is part of most of the green areas of the Brazilian cities, the spaces invaded by the capim, because of their transitory and ephemeral character, are not taken into account by the environmental agency as green areas. In its core, the capim can be considered as a sign of the premature decay of the Brazilian urban landscape, from the lack of urban planning and the strength of the tropical nature resistance.
Inserted in the Art Positions section for the Miami Basel fair, a platform that is more recognized due to its experimental feature, the “Reserva Utópica [capim]” (Utopic Reserve) proposes, in the end, the creation of an “empty stand”, surrounded by aged bricks, filled with loads of capim.
Cinthia Marcelle
VOLTA AO MUNDO [ROUND THE WORLD] from the series Unus Mundus, 2004
Video, 16’29’’ in loop, color, sound
Brasil
Nine white vans move around the same square, where they can all be seen at the same time. The vehicles enter one at a time into the circuit, moving simultaneously around the place. The vans leave the square the same way they did to enter, leaving a track in an empty space. How many vans are moving around squares right now?