How Many Worlds Are We? explores and distances itself from traditional binary oppositions between notions of East and West considering the ways they can be positively articulated in contemporary artistic and cultural practices.
The transformation of the dynamics of cultural relations between regions made distant in the past due to geography is revealed today as an important factor of decisive mutations in the social landscape of the world we live in.
According to Alexander Melo’s research and reflection made during the last few years in the WEST, namely in Latin America (mainly in Brazil and in the states of Amazonas and Bahia), and in the EAST (mainly in Thailand and South East Asian countries), this exhibition arose, aiming to gather a diversity of contemporary artists active in these regions. Besides a decentering of geo-cultural perspectives, we search for the possibility of confrontation between different ways of relating to notions like nature, spirituality or humanity.
The approach is not anthropological or ecological, in a strict sense, still takes “NATURE” and “SPIRIT” – namely in relation with the “FOREST” and the entities that inhabit it, in Brazil or in Thailand – as main topics or references to help audience understand the knowledge, motivations and expectations expressed in the work of the selection of artists, namely, in the way in which they articulate an eventual affiliation to a specific cultural tradition with potential insertion in the global dynamics of popular mass culture.
The sculptures, installations, photography, and film in this exhibition investigate the ways in which we can re-imagine our relations with nature and the realm of the spiritual within a kind of poetic intelligence as it manifests itself in the work of the artists we present.
How many worlds are we?
Artists: Ayrson Heráclito (Brazil), Jonathas de Andrade (Brazil), Lyno Vuth (Cambodia), Pratchaya Phinthong (Thailand), Soe Yu Nwe (Myanmar), Tawatchai Puntusawasdi (Thailand), Torlarp Larpjaroensook (Thailand), Vasco Araújo (Portugal), Wantanee Siripatananuntakul (Thailand), Yonamine (Angola)
Curated by Alexandre Melo
