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Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other
By Dan Johnson
The Miami Art Museum is presenting one of the most interesting exhibitions in South Florida this summer until October 16. “A Day Like Any Other,” an exhibition of the works of Brazilian Rivane Neuenschwander, was organized by the New Museum and the Irish Museum of Art, and represents her first mid-career survey focusing on more than 10 years of artistic practice and innovation. Her work is comprised of painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, film, immersive installations, participatory actions and performances. It combines conceptual rigor with poetic evocation.
Neuenschwander gets her inspiration from nature, the passage of time, the cycles of life, the mysteries of perception and human relations. In her work, it is common to find circular and oval forms translated into droplets of water, bubbles, confetti, eggs, moons, constellations and zeros. These are forms associated with fragility, femininity, evolution, and sources of life. Many of her works blur the boundaries between the author, the work of art and the spectator. Some of her pieces are not solely of her authorship, but are rather the result of her collaboration with musicians, forensic artists, bar patrons and the very spectators who attend her exhibitions.
In the limited space of this article, it is impossible to analyze all of the pieces comprising the show. Below I present four of the pieces I find most interesting in the hopes that you will be encouraged to visit the exposition. Of note is I Wish Your Wish (2003), an enormous installation occupying an entire room, in which thousands of satin ribbons with wishes printed on them have been placed on the walls. The ribbons are inserted into holes in the wall distributed symmetrically. Visitors are encouraged to write their wish on a piece of paper and then search the installation for the ribbon that best describes the wish they wrote down, or one that simply pleases them. The spectator then leaves the paper on which he wrote his own wish in the hole in the wall, replacing the ribbon that he now wears on his wrist as a bracelet. This piece is inspired by a popular tradition of the Nosso Senhor do Bonfim Church (Our Lord of Bonfim) in Bahia, Brazil. Believers approach the church doors and tie ribbons with their wishes on the doors as well as on their wrists. The ribbons must be tied with three knots and kept until they are broken through use. It is believed that this guarantees the materialization of the wish. In Neuenschwander’s installation, visitors adopt the wishes of other visitors who preceded them and they are tasked with filling the empty spaces with their own wishes in an endless chain of exchanges. Her participatory works are set up like invitations to create something new in a context in which the spectator intervenes in defining the rules of the game.
Gallery view of “Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other.” Miami Art Museum (July 17 - October 16, 2011)
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The Conversation (2010) pays homage to Francis Ford Coppola’s 1974 film of the same name. It involves an immersive environment in which the artist and her team of collaborators have pitilessly dismantled the paneling in a room that hides microphones. The work constitutes an investigation and a wake-up call relative to the paranoia that characterizes a contemporary society in which privacy no longer represents a right.
Another immersive environment is Rains, Rains (2002), a large installation that mimics the atmosphere of artificial rain. Numerous metal buckets are displayed either hanging from the ceiling or resting on the floor. The buckets that hang from the ceiling allow drops of water to fall slowly into the buckets on the floor of the room. Once the falling water is used up, it is replaced by the water collected in the buckets in an endless cycle.
First Love (2005), whose name is taken from a novel by Samuel Beckett, is a very poetic piece. In this work, which involves narration, memory and nostalgia, visitors are invited to describe the face of their first love to a forensic artist. A new face and a new identity are then created for the subject of the portrait based on the impression he left in the memory of the person recalling him.
Rivane Neuenschwander is part of the flourishing Brazilian contemporary artistic movement. Imbued with the legacy of twentieth century Latin American modernism, this movement creates an art free of formalism that raises a liquid notion of time, a taste for a not necessarily lineal narrative, an interest in the intervention and reinvention of physical spaces, and an opening for the active intervention of the public in the work of art.
“Rivane Neuenschwander: A Day Like Any Other” is on view through October 16, 2011. Miami Art Museum. 101 West Flager St. Miami, FL, 33130. www.miamiartmuseum.org
Dan Johnson is an artist based in Fort Lauderdale.
