Emancipatory Action:
Paula Trope and the Meninos
On view from Thursday, May 24 to Friday, August 31, 2007
Curated by José Falconi and Gabriela Rangel
Thurs, May 24, 2007
Curatorial dialogue with Paula Trope from 6-7 P.M.
Opening reception from 7 P.M.
Hours: Wed – Sat from 12-6 P.M.
680 Park Ave. at 68 Street
New York NY 10021
Publication available through Harvard University Press
Americas Society is pleased to announce the exhibition Emancipatory Action: Paula Trope and the Meninos, the first North American show of the Rio de Janeiro based artist Paula Trope. Focused on the process of symbolic exchanges between Trope and her partners, the exhibition includes enlarged color prints presented as diptychs, triptychs or multiple panels in conjunction with works on pinhole video made by Trope and the Meninos, children and adolescents who live in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. The artist has established a long-term collaboration with the Meninos that brings together a series of photographs, videos, and, more recently, an urban planning project in the Morro de Pereirão. The exhibition also features On The Move and Passage Tales series made with children in other locations such as São Paulo and Havana, Cuba in which Tropes partners did not operate the cameras but participated in the construction of the photographs.
Paula Tropes point of departure is grounded in the sociopolitical concerns and radical experiments developed in Brazil in the 1960s and 1970s by artist Helio Oiticica and filmmaker Glauber Rocha. Both decisive figures founded Neo-Concretism, Tropicalia and Cinema Novo, advocating projects of emancipation through the visual arts. Inspired by their legacy Trope presents photographs co-produced by the Meninos whom she met in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, and who live in the urban shantytowns vast areas discarded from modern society. Beyond her collaboration with the children and adolescents whom are co-authors of the images, Tropes agency changed their legal status to make them beneficiaries of the work. The pinhole cameras and perforated video cameras used by the artist transforms the apparatus of image production and consumption of late capitalism by examining the materiality of photography and electronic media from its margins. Tropes use of outdated technology and discarded devices stresses the aesthetic dependency of those images on the notions of disposal/discarding and recuperation and pushes such ideas into a broader debate of photo-realism and authorship.
Born in Rio de Janeiro in 1962, Paula Trope studied film at the Universidade Federal Fluminense in Niteroi, Brazil. She completed a Masters degree in Techniques and Poetics of Image and Sound at the Universidade de São Paulo. Trope has had solo shows at the Museu de Bellas Artes de Rio de Janeiro, Paço das Artes, Sao Paulo, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro. Her recent group shows include the Venice Biennial (2007), the Sao Paulo Biennial (2006), and A Subversão dos Meios (2003), Itau Cultural, Sao Paulo.
Emancipatory Action: Paula Trope and the Meninos is organized in conjunction with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, and is made possible by the generous support of the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency; The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Trust; and Humberto and Claudia Carvalho.
Funds for the catalogue have been provided by the Bruce T. Halle Family Foundation. This exhibition is the Visual Arts component of the Americas Societys Embrace Brazil festival.
Funding for this series was provided by David Rockefeller.
PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Curatorial Dialogue with the artist
Thursday, May 24, 6 p.m.
Paula Trope alongside Tim Rollinss Kids of Survival
Bronx Museum of the Arts, Saturday, May 26, 2 p.m.
Relational Practices – Panel Discussion with Paula Trope, Paulo Herkenhoff, Tim Rollins, Linda Norden, José Falconi and Gabriela Rangel
Tuesday, May 29, at 6 p.m.
(Still) Thriving on Adversity: Contextualizing the Work of Paula Trope
Wednesday, June 6, 6 p.m.
Reservations are required. Please email culture@americas-society.org, or call (212) 277 8359. Members receive priority seating.
