Daughters of the Air

 
And I’m right on time
And the birds keep singing

And I’m right on time
And the girl keeps singing

—PJ Harvey, “A Place Called Home,” Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (2000)

museu do louvre pau-brazyl (2016-2021) at the Louvre Building

The Louvre building was designed in the 1950s by a controversial figure in the São Paulo architecture scene, the entrepreneur João Artacho Jurado. Although he never trained as an architect or engineer, Artacho was an important player who disputed the city’s landscape during the boom of its verticalization process, facing the pantheon of celebrated modernist architects, including Gregori Warchavchik, Oscar Niemeyer, Paulo Mendes da Rocha, Rino Levi, and Vilanova Artigas. Throughout his career, architects of the modernist canon, intellectuals, and regulatory entities constantly criticized his kitsch aesthetic, but this never prevented the construction company Monções, owned by Artacho and his brother Aurélio Jurado Artacho, from developing his designs. His buildings were highly ornate and allegorical. The façades were enveloped with candy-colored tiles and the concrete columns covered with marble plaques. Artacho mixed styles such as art nouveau, deco and a Jetsons-style futurism with modernist references—he was at the extreme opposite of the principles of the modernist and brutalist spirit dominant in São Paulo at that time. But Artacho’s endeavors were widely accepted by the market and he would advertise his creations with pride: the Louvre was described as “the maximum perfection,” “a magnificent architectonic creation,” “everything one could dream of.”

One of his strategies in seducing the new bourgeoisie, accustomed to residing in large houses, was to invest in spacious communal areas and leisure facilities that included tearooms, music rooms, playgrounds, swimming pools, bars, and shops on the ground floor, depending on the location, structure, and size of the development. Artacho was so interested in visual allure that he made sure all of his buildings had a Hollywood-like atmosphere; the Louvre embodied the projection of his artistic narrative. He even planned an art gallery on the ground floor in one version of the building’s blueprints, which never materialized. The space became a public notary office instead.

Not only does the mixed-use building carry the name of the paradigmatic Parisian museum, but each of the entrances of the four blocks of the building display, imprinted on the entrance door in golden letters, the name of a European master—Da Vinci, Rembrandt, Renoir, and Velázquez—with reproductions of their work decorating the entrance halls—most of which, paradoxically, are not to be found in the Parisian Musée du Louvre’s collection, reinforcing the Hollywoodian feeling of a film set. Waiting for the elevator, one can enjoy a discolored framed print of La Gioconda and Lady with an Ermine, The Jewish Bride, Flower with Vases, and Las Meninas. The five apartment blocks at the rear appear unnamed, but the original blueprints of the building and a sales advertisement from the 1950s indicate they were once named after Pedro Américo, a nineteenth-century Brazilian painter who, at present, has no tangible presence in the building. Art history and the history of colonization have collided in the Louvre from the very beginning.

The museu do louvre pau-brazyl was a fictional franchise curated by Guilherme Giufrida and myself that entertained the simultaneity of narratives, layers, and asymmetries of representation embedded in every corner of the Louvre building. From allusion to reality, the simulacrum created by Artacho Jurado was turned into a concrete, palpable museum by way of multiple actions: the inaugural exhibition, “9 of 9” (2016) took place in the mezzanine’s palatial corridors. Both ground floor and mezzanine feature stores and companies open to the general public during business hours. The first is comprised of everyday quick services; between Da Vinci and Rembrandt there are Santander ATMs and a beauty shop where you can quickly stop by to buy a deodorant next to Renoir; in the Pedro Américo block you can enjoy an hour-long Pilates session or have your hair done. The mezzanine is composed of more corporate businesses, including a human resources company called “Persona,” real estate agencies, and the studio of an interior designer.

During the month and a half of the “9 of 9” exhibition, the works of its 22 artists had an intense coexistence with these shops and companies. Some of the shop owners were disappointed with the “museum” because it didn’t feature any paintings. The building’s doormen began to give spontaneous guided visits; one of them, Pedro, took home a video art DVD from Coletivo Filé de Peixe’s pirated video library to watch with his family. A real estate agent “stole” Cibelle Cavalli Basto’s Cas(c)a/\Carniça piece and returned it 24 hours later, his motivations still unknown today.

The following year, in 2017, “Desdito” (Disavowed), a solo show by Lais Myrrha, gave visibility to the erased artist Pedro Américo by reenacting his painting Independência ou Morte! (Independence or Death!, 1888). The performance took place in the area of the building originally named after him: the staircase connecting the ground floor to the mezzanine, the rear blocks and the underground garage.^[1]

Subsequently, “3^rd act: the verso” (2019) was an exhibition that focused on the building’s rear-facing area, which is also the Pedro Américo façade. The aim was to turn the back into the front. It was the final part of the trilogy of exhibitions that acted like a scanner, revealing the contents of the Louvre building, both physically and in terms of the lexical universe of its artistic inspiration. We scanned the building first from its most visible area, beginning on São Luís Avenue, where one encounters the European painters; we proceeded to the back blocks and the garage underground, there manifesting Pedro Américo’s presence; finally, in this movement, we swapped the building’s back for its front.

The inversion led us to an empty lot behind the building that is also surrounded by the backs of the Copan and São Luiz Plaza buildings. This unoccupied space allows residents from the three buildings to enjoy a type of Hitchcockian sociability—where people flirt, hotly debate politics, and celebrate soccer goals—since more than 2,000 apartment windows look out onto this lot. This coliseum-like space became a triangular amphitheater for the museu do louvre pau-brazyl: the vacant space the stage, the buildings surrounding it the grandstands.

The lot belongs to the University of São Paulo (USP) and had been unused for at least five years. Despite the fact that USP is a prestigious public educational institution, its real estate department denied us permission to install artworks in the lot. This restriction was embraced and turned into a tool for the exhibition: all the thirteen works haunted the lot by bordering it through the surfaces available at the block’s perimeter comprising the three buildings, such as the façades, walls, windows, lamp posts, sidewalks, and the wind.

Louvre and Copan Buildings Crossing Paths

The museu do louvre pau-brazyl is anchored in the Louvre building’s specificity, and the negotiation of setting exhibitions in a non-traditional place dealt only with its administration. For “3^rd act: the verso” it was the first time that the artworks spilled out, beyond the Louvre’s boundaries, connecting the building to its world famous neighbor—the Copan by Oscar Niemeyer. Copan plays an important role in São Paulo, a city that does not feature on the routes of mainstream tourism: the recently implemented hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus is always empty, and there isn’t a consensus on what the city’s central landmark is. It only takes a visit to a newsstand to see that it is a city that struggles with postcards; you will mostly find aerial views of skyscrapers, the generic cable-stayed bridge, or historic buildings shot from bad angles. In this context, the Copan, with its unique “S” shape and the ability to shelter people from different backgrounds in its apartments that range from 30 sq. to 200 sq., assumed its position as one of the favorite metonymies for this complicated metropolis. According to its administrator Affonso Celso Prazeres de Oliveira, “the Copan is São Paulo’s equivalent of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, nothing represents the city better.”^[2]

Shifting the Louvre’s vector also involved a shift in terms of with who to negotiate with, through which Affonso became an interlocutor of the louvre pau-brazyl project. Besides sharing the lot’s view, the Copan took part in this exhibition because some artworks required permission to be installed in its spaces. This was the case of the FOLHA D PAU-BRAZYL newspaper, distributed to all the apartments facing the lot, as well as of the performance Antigone’s heiresses by Francis Wilker and Ligia Souza de Oliveira, which took place on the fire escape of block F of the building. In addition, there were the sculpture Ghost (Lygia Lina Lisa) by Pia Eikaas, installed on the back of the building, and Black Semiotics by Tetine, which would be displayed on the wall on the back of the lot facing Copan’s private street.

Affonso de Oliveira granted permission for the abovementioned works, except for Black Semiotics by Tetine, because he argued that the wall on the back of the lot at the Copan’s private street was not actually within his purview, but belonged to the building on the other side of the wall: the Investimento building.

The administration of the Investimento building granted permission to install Black Semiotics, aware of the work’s content. On April 13, the piece was on view alongside the thirteen other works in an exhibition scheduled to last nine days. The work is a diptych of two banners that display words in rectangular boxes connected amongst them. The first, Every morning in the world, displays words that evoke the 1980s imaginary of the Copan’s surroundings before the gentrification process, such as HIV – MIXED SAUNA – HANDJOBS – MALICE – LOVE STORY – MAPPIN – COPAN CINEMA – TOTEM – TABOO – AVENIDA IPIRANGA – RUA SÃO BENTO – DISCOUNTED STUDENT TICKETS. The second, Wild is the wind/ All Women in the World, includes the names, dates of birth and death of women murdered by the Brazilian dictatorship, listed by the National Truth Commission.

The vocabulary on these posters evokes a map of the public sphere, of places and historic facts, but also a private labyrinth of memory in which people who shared this space and time can locate their own stories. Every morning in the world recalls the individual impressions, feelings, and emotions of those who walked, shopped, enjoyed a tea, or cruised at Mappin, the former luxury downtown department store. Wild is the wind/ All Women in the World brings to the surface the memories of those who fought against or supported the dictatorial regime, and those who grieved a loved one murdered by the non-democratic government.

These maps bring to the surface something long gone: facts, places, memories, and people that were buried away or disappeared by the dictatorship. Despite gentrification and the regime’s efforts to reshape the past, the two maps unearth, dig up these repressed, undesirable social subjects from the communal backyard. And, indeed, these works had the power to shake the reality around it: one night the banner Wild is the wind/ All Women in the World was found draped over the wall, which features broken glass as spikes along the top to prevent unwanted visitors from jumping over. It was as if an improbable, wild wind whirled up the heavy piece, folding it in over itself. Strangely, only the banner with the names of the murdered women was draped over the broken glass, a chilling reminder of the torture those bodies suffered. The work was rescued and its installation reinforced. But the next morning, both pieces were removed very early by employees of the Copan and kept in Affonso’s office without any explanations about the reason of removal either to the curators or producer.

When negotiating the permissions with Affonso, when it came to the wall on the back of the lot, the producer, Sofia Pappi, and I, two women in charge of the project, went to his office to make sure that we were talking about the same space; we showed him which wall we specifically had in mind and he clearly stated: no, it was not under the Copan’s purview. But right after he saw the content of the Black Semiotics, the names of the women murdered by the dictatorship, he promptly asked for them to be removed and the scene was repeated: Sofia and I in his office, this time asking for explanations about the removal; and to sum-up a heated-up, unfiltered, closed-door conversation, he told us that yes, the work was censored because of the content: there would be no display regarding the dictatorial times in his building under his management. When questioned about disrespecting our previous agreements, Affonso said: “It’s your word against mine.” Well, yes, it is. And these are my words.

In his desire to cease communication between those women and the surroundings, Affonso and Copan’s employees placed their hands on them without consent, as if they were unbounded territory, as if our agreements were unbounded territory. In doing so, he denied their right of existence and their right to a memorial. The reaction they had because of the fear of the presence produced by those names implies the central actions of the dictatorship: the control of speech and bodies, disposal of these bodies, making them disappear, hoping they will be forgotten.

Affonso has enjoyed a 27-year term of administrating the building. All these years, he had been the pioneer of the renewal of the Copan and its surroundings, which maybe gave him a sense of authority and the idea that he could interfere in any menacing proximity according to his parameters. His trajectory is quite revealing in relation to this matter: his mission at the building started in 1993, after a decade of the building’s decadence and decline. Affonso was empowered to “rescue the Copan from hell” and to “moralize” the building, as a 1995 Folha de São Paulo article reads.^[3] To accomplish this, he “asked some soldier friends to quietly patrol the building, eventually cleaning out the less desirable inhabitants.”^[4]

Affonso embodies the pacifier archetype and his management was very successful; in the words of Giovanni Bright, a professional magician who has lived in the Copan for 35 years, during an interview with The Guardian: “When I first moved in, I used to be ashamed to tell people I lived here. It was a mess. There were power cuts. Topless women did drugs on the roof. Anyone could go anywhere,” he recalls. “Now, I believe it is the coolest building in Latin America. It’s safe, it’s central and there is so much attention on this building that it helps artists like me to get more visibility.”^[5]

This visibility that Mr. Bright mentions requires that others types of existence are vanished, and Affonso keeps cleaning out the less desirable inhabitants, even the metaphorical ones. After the exhibition and the censorship episode, Affonso granted permission for the graffiti artist Derlon to depict a siren in the exact spot where Black Semiotics had been installed. In an interview with the Brazilian magazine Veja, Affonso stated that this art project was the one and only request he had received, and that he “was excited, satisfied, happy with the project as well as with the artist’s track record.”^[6] One of the most famous administrators in São Paulo real state marked his territory, taking over the narrative of his domain with a palatable image.

The cornerstone of the museu do louvre pau-brazyl is an investigation into the choices of symbols that remain and those vanished from space: these two operations are equally important. One of the project’s interests was the possibility of experiencing a place through what was latent, forgotten, erased, replaced. Our aim was to recover the traces, to make them visible, to give importance to what has been left behind in the footnotes of history, and to be attentive to what lies underneath supposedly neutral images and discourses. And beneath that siren are the traces of suffocated women.

It is not a matter of stating that Affonso went after this specific image as a provocation, but to stress the mechanisms of his choices, which image he thought to be safe and neutral enough and what he approves over the Black Semiotics. What now occupies the space where the names of women were censored tells a lot about the Western male dominant culture embedded in the collective unconscious of how women are seen and defined. The wall now depicts a mermaid, a lighthouse, the sea, and the moon. Maritime elements. But it can also be seen to represent the long journey Sirens have undergone throughout Western reinterpretations of their meanings, powers, and appearances. The siren/mermaid is highly sexualized but sexless, capable of powerful spells as a creature, but voiceless amid civilization. She is deadly, but easy to disarm.

Sirens were initially mantic creatures in Greek mythology, first portrayed as half-bird, half-woman. They appear in epic poems such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apollonius of Rhodes’s Argonautica, but the memorable short passage in Homer’s The Odyssey made them famous. The episode in which they feature plays an important role in the collective imagination, intertwining the feminine voice with peril. From here we derive the contemporary use of the word siren, representing a dangerous noise, a device displayed on top of ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks emitting a loud sound that warns of a menacing proximity. Civil defense sirens are also used to announce natural disasters or terrorist attacks. The siren utters: “beware, death is close.”

The Siren is the symbol that vacillates from threatening male property and reputation to willingly accept her own decapitation, her loss of speech; her agency in history becomes a lovely form. In the context of our project, a once monstrous, now domesticated and disarmed creature replaced the threatening names of women murdered by the dictatorship. Fate repeated itself, like an enduring curse; once more this mermaid is to be seen, not heard, she is serving a male purpose. This mermaid is an attempt to leave an inconsequential, frictionless image to her surroundings. A mermaid that was chosen and approved to wash away the dispute, but the Siren utters: “beware, death is close.” Here are their names: