2019
Boston Literary District Mural, commissioned by the Boston Downtown Bid
This mural was commissioned by the Boston Downtown BID and created in partnership with the Boston Literary District. The three excerpts featured in this mural are by:
Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), was an American journalist, editor, critic, translator, and women's rights advocate associated with the American transcendentalism movement. She was the first American female war correspondent, writing for Horace Greeley's New-York Tribune, and full-time book reviewer in journalism. Her book Woman in the Nineteenth Century is considered the first major feminist work in the United States.
Edward Bellamy (1850-1898), “Looking Backward: 2000–1887” a utopian socialist novel.
Eddie Maisonet, is a transgender, disabled, Afro-Puerto Rican interdisciplinary storyteller, teaching artist, and actor. He is born and bred from Boston with his roots lovingly planted in Jamaica Plain. In 2017 and 2019, he was awarded artist residencies with The Theater Offensive. His 2019 collaborative project, Narratives of Home, was a response to the question of the unique ways gentrification impacts our communities.
A little note from the Mass Cultural Council Community Initiative:
"Next time you’re in Boston’s Downtown Crossing area, check out this great collaboration between Boston Literary District and the Downtown Boston BID; at the alleyway connecting Winter Street and Temple Place.
It only fits one person at a time and runs for about 40 feet. Inside are bands of color evoking Sol Lewitt with three areas of text w/ excerpts of writings by Margaret Fuller, Edward Bellamy Memorial Association, and Eddie Maisonet. Really beautiful pit stop when walking and exploring the City.
Armor Dress
Beacon Gallery, Boston MA,
Totems Exhibition
The Armor Dress materializes a soft armor to protect delicate bodies and complex ideas. In times when the political theater is used to crush our sense of freedom and choice toward our bodies and affections, the armor dress offers shelter in love. When one slips into a state of mind softened by love, it becomes easier to welcome empathy and compassion. The ideas around love continuously evolve and are expanded upon. The Armor Dress is a reminder that when a mindset of wonder, self-caring, and unconditional love is attained, we become stronger and more capable of coexisting and affecting change.
Embracers
A. R. E. A. Gallery, Boston MA,
Fiesta de Abrazos
These interactive sculptures change as they are manipulated. Every time they return to a stationary position they take a new form. Viewers are invited to interact with the Embracers.
In our adult lives, we do not get to experience playfulness enough, especially in stressful times, where bad news seems to be the norm. These sculptures create spaces for transgressive enjoyment, hopeful perspectives of friendship and I daresay Temporary Autonomous Zones. Moments for coming together
and enjoying each other's company and shelter.
The embracers were first shown at a pop up exhibition at A R E A Gallery in Boston, MA. Brazil, the country I grew up in, has been going through a worsening political crisis, in many ways similar to the one in North America. To better understand these sculptures, it is important to mention Carnaval, perhaps the largest countrywide Brazilian cultural manifestation, and a collective state of trance. It is a moment of softening the boundaries of self, where collective catharsis is experienced and embraced. It is a time to celebrate, not any particular achievement or success, but perhaps the very simple/complex fact of existence. It is also a time of fierce political critique and satire. The acts of hugging and loving, caring and standing together become themselves political acts of defiance. That is how the Embracers came to be - an attempt to manifest even the smallest flicker of the collective catharsis that is Carnaval.
Brazilian Culture, with all its contradictions and challenges, stands strong in sweet glittery bliss.
As the poet Ferreira Gullar would say "Distraídos Venceremos" (Distracted we shall triumph).
Nick Cave Joy Parade, Boston - ExXercise in Collective Balance
Organized by Now and There
Exercise in Collective Balance consists of five garments bound together. These garments can withstand a much larger amount of tension than regular clothes. Once a group of five people decides to wear them, they are bound together for as long as they desire. Some participants may choose to stay longer with the group, others might quickly offer their place to viewers that decide to join.
There are no particular rules as to how long the group must stay together or what the participants can or cannot do, aside from being respectful and mindful to other fellow participants as well as the surrounding people and environment. The simplest tasks and movements become a complex study of group dynamics, collective movement, balance and collaboration between the participants. Interdependence is created within the group, every individual decision and action becomes a group negotiation and directly affects all participants.
This piece explores movement and sensorial aspects of human relationships, both important subjets in Brazilian modern and contemporary art history. Helio Oiticica’s “Parangolés” were seminal experiments in sensorial art activated by participation. To Oiticica his garments only fulfilled their potential once activated and animated by a body in motion. Exercise in Collective Balance is also highly dependent on the participant's bodies and movement, but the collaboration between the participants naturally becomes the priority. Every participant needs to evaluate every personal choice while simultaneously taking into consideration the presence, actions, and input of other individuals involved in this experiment.
Exercise in Collective Balance takes place within the very process of figuring out actions, movement and decision making within the possibilities and limitations offered in a collective experience.
