#eva rocha

Art, art objects, are/got tied to value and status - becoming a commodity. As a commodity it becomes valuable only once value is given and profit is generated. One of the implications of this commoditization of art-objects is that, it prevents present-discussions between artist/art and viewers of the art produced in the time-period when that art is created and, therefore, a time-dialogue is taking place in the artwork. That happens because artworks, mostly, only arrives in museums way after the time that they were created. Most of the time art is displayed in small galleries that shows and sell the work in the first-market. That first-market, in majority, tends to an art that is of an immediate status of consuming: an art for a house’s display, for example. That filters many artworks that are not pleasing to be hung in a wall, or that was not created from more traditional materials. Galleries that are more art-history oriented, inserted in a larger art-scene, and that are more about an art-statement-artwork, are already representing established artists of a period. Those galleries are dealing with the art of well established artists of an earlier art period, selling them in a first or second market. The view of an artwork in a more established place of art relevance, such as art museums, becomes even further from the time when it was created. Those artworks enter museums only to be seen, literally, in "retrospective."There are times when topics that are relevant in a time-period are still relevant topics from a different time-period. Either it happens due to the closeness of those periods in a larger time in history, or because they are topics of a universal nature. In some cases also it happens because artists have pre-seen an aesthetic (that is not because they are wizards or ahead of time but because they are in-their-time: they are not a consequence of prior time and aesthetic. Whatever is the case, there are moments when different aesthetics/movements are taking place. During these times, a certain art-dissonance can happen due to the transitional moment, the layered moment, of different art-aesthetics, art-movements, art-periods. That art dissonance can also happen due to the appropriation of new topics, forms, concepts, discussions, to re-contextualize and make relevant an art of another moment which is an art that was not created under the same aesthetic, topics, philosophies. That force, that motion creating the dissonance, happens mostly through the written-contextualization of artworks for galleries, for art collections, and for art-institutions that impulse and/or impose the art selection. That process of viewing-reviewing a new form is intuitive, or forced, in seeing the importance in a new aesthetics. Most of time, art-collectors, art-critics and art-historians rely on the safeness of an accepted aesthetic [“Sunflower" would more likely pass unnoticed and rejected among classic flowers.] Many other works would.

There is time-lapse needed for the eyes to understand a new aesthetic or movement and accept its relevance. There is also the commodity aspect that, since the established-art business has to maintain the relevance of the already collected work, it cannot be discharged in favor of a new art-current. The new aesthetic has also to gain price before reaching the more exuberant prices of a second or third market of the ultimate collectors that will dictate the establishment of those artists and aesthetics. The further time passes, the further the fundamental representation of an aesthetic will solidify in art-history. Whatever is the case, in the lifetime of an artist, the art-produced will only fast enter a second and third market when reaching a well established first market - which depends on many variables that are not related to aesthetic (again vide Sunflower) but that relays in connections, access to funds, employment in art-institutions that promotes the art product, etc. That delay in participating in an art-immediacy (in present; not in an art-history of the past) makes that the artwork is always seen in retrospective. Many times the past-artwork becomes adjusted to a present aesthetic or adapted to topics-aesthetics of a present. That dissonance in time, occurring from the moment that the artwork is created and the time it is contextualized, creates a lapse in the dialogue with the work. 

With the advent of the internet, a dissonance effect got even further established since, allegorically speaking, the view [from the car], the pass view [from side mirror] and further view of the road [the GPS view] are taking place at once: the new aesthetic is happening (road) the established artwork of last decades are on view at the galleries (mirror) and the art critics and jurors of art-calls have an immediate access to the new art topics proposed (GPS: global positioning system). This way we have: the view of road (present moment of creating art [in] a present aesthetic based in any factors [many times opposed to prior aesthetic], the view of the past-artworks seeing in retrospective, and the view of the global positioning system showing the current-sequential-moment where the ‘art-vehicle’ which is the literal new “movement” the car is doing. In the moment that it is happening, it creates a traffic jam when cars are entering the road (first market), cars on the road (stablished first and second market) are trying to enter the new-ways being seeing in the GPS power-traffic control operating the roads to allow the limousines to enter the roads given by the GPS because they are celebrities and special guests from the industry and have the vip pass.

In that moment, the current moment of art, the view of the last decades stablished art, and the contextualization using new thoughts in art, gets discrepant. We are now living in one of those moments where different art moments/movements are lapping. At this current transition, as an example, there is a lapping taking place from the so called object-oriented philosophies to another aesthetic. Object-oriented sculptures were for sculptures what abstraction painting is for figurative painting {an abstraction of the figure/human in detriment of form only, or material only. In this transition, a so-called “object in its-own dimensionality” created inside the o.o. philosophies, becomes displayed in a gallery in “it-is own” intend "dimensionality" as an object existing in its own space that is not related to the human - as posit by those philosophies] but it becomes now described for its humanistic and social aspect. That dissonance-effect becomes similar to be looking at a color-line abstract-painting being described for its human’s figurative-forms of a figure that is not in that abstract painting [that abstracted the human]. In the allegoric example one reads: “the forms of the voluptuous-body near the starving-body on the ground is signifying sacrifice and pain...” while looking at a white and red stripped canvas, or looking at a dot in space. It becomes dissociative. There is a period necessary for the entanglement of those movements to be left alone and the works be seen in their own aesthetic and importance. As it is absurd to make a square to fit a circle or vice-versa. Each aesthetic has to be what is and it aesthetic is relevant for what it is! The ‘newest’ in not necessary more relevant, each movement it its own aesthetic. 

Since I was a child I make things with hair. I grew up in a 3 streets/9 blocks town. We had no traditional art materials other than a 5 colored pencil box. I had the impulse to create and I did it with whatever material I had. I made drawings with my hair or objects with it. Even thou I started to use hair just as an available material, as it was also soil, for instance, through life I naturally developed it as a metaphorical material: hair was for me a metaphor for life and death. As life, as nature, hair grows as it grows the branches and leaves of a tree. It has an element of vitality [vita/life]. Hair holds sensuality and eroticism.  Hair holds a dichotomy of life and death: if attached to the body it is inviting to the touch and has a quality of sensuality that is undeniable, once cut, it immediately causes aversion to the touch. The inviting sensuality of it is such that, once a religious vow is done in many religions the hair is shaved to show renouncement to the pleasures of the world. It is a renouncement of the body, to eroticism. “Eroticism is the approve of life even in death” [George Bataille].  In the place where I was born, there was 1 cemetery, where one could buy a grave. The ones that could not afford a grave were laid in some designated graves and, after a time, their graves were opened and their remains were thrown in a collective grave. It was a concrete grave, a concrete box covered by a ‘lage’ of two concrete tops. I, and other children, liked going there when the collective grave was opened and the dead were thrown in it. Sometimes we scared each other by making hairballs and throwing them at each other.  We knew anyone in that 9 blocks city and recognized them by their hair.  In the collective grave, I would always look for Maria. Maria liked beads. When I found her body in the water well, I recognized her by her beads before the men pulled her body from it. I made her a necklace and throw it in the collective grave. Hair stands for me for humans, for individuals, and for the collective. 

Later in life I moved to São Paulo. I was in theater, and I created a hair rosary for a play: Olimpo dos Orixás, written by Jayme Compri, where I performed Mainha, a cabocla [indigenous + black + white] spiritual leader from Brasilândia. While doing research on that play and in Brazilian religious syncretism, I thought again of hair as the material that was significant. That necklace rosary was to signify the collective spiritual and also the loss of unity due to the imposed religiosity in terms of power. Due to having worked with Eugênio Barba, founder of the International School of Anthropological Theater during the International Theater Festivals in Brazil, I got interested in how theater and art, in general, were recording, in an anthropological way, culture and time. I had not seen art in a context of a gallery or museum until I was 19 and moved to São Paulo and visited the Museu de Arte de São Paulo. I was fascinated but it. I questioned what all that represented and how that related to my world. I got inhibition to create after seeing that art done with oil paints and bronze. They were expensive materials. In 1998-2002 I lived in United States and visited other museums. I was amazed and shocked by Pre-Columbian Art. That art, so called artifacts, were of a different art material and looked down on a scale of power. It was difficult being an indigenous descendant and seeing that art from that perspective and loss. At that time, I got interested in visual arts. I could not transfer my undergrad studies from Brazil to the US to study arts, so I transferred and adapted it to an Interdisciplinary Studies degree. When talking about Brazilian syncretism and defending papers for class lectures in I used my Rosary made from hair again to talk about Brazilian Afro and Indigenous syncretic Religions and its effects on art. I created other objects from hair at that time, after seeing burial cloths in pre-columbian galleries, especially in 1999 when I visited the Metropolitan Museum. I got interested in using hair as a cloth material, but was discouraged due to the repugnance that it causes.

When living in the Andes of Peru, in Baños del Incas and Cajamarca, in 2005, the materials of my childhood that were natural to me became again my material -- since I did not have a Eurocentric pressure in relation to art. I started to create freely. That direct connection with cultures that had been creating art in pre-Columbus, pre-colonialism, was very liberating! While teaching theater in an international school, I asked some campesinos [indigenous descendants of the Andes] to learn their art. Upon returning to the United States and, again visiting pre-Columbian art galleries in museums, and while seeing those objects old or reproduced, and while not seeing art by indigenous peoples' descendants in modern or contemporary galleries, I saw how our art-history was inexistent. The effects of colonialism were also felt in our possible/impossible participation in the arts. I became a volunteer to give tours of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. While a European descendant could find a concise art-history timeline, an indigenous descendant could not. At the same time, I started a non-profit to help the inclusion of Latinos, indigenous descendants mostly, in the arts. I, we, would became invited to participate in the arts during Heritage Month only. Many artists struggled to be included. Many were creating in their own tradition and that too became a difficulty to be accepted. Even thou I was always creating, it was not my intention to enter in a career of being an artist. I liked to create and created with my own my materials -also due to the lack of funds to use more 'noble' materials. They were not meant to be seen. Many times, I made drawings with my hair. My first work shown in a gallery was made from hair [in photo: Eaves" 2011]. It was an invitation to participate at the 6th Biennial International Miniature Invitational Think Small at Art Space in Richmond, VA . My work was featured in an article by Amy Richie, due to the curiosity to that material choice and her eyes as an art-historial to associate it with Ingres. That European connection was still a reference to seeing the art, in that case done by me not intending that connection. In 2011 I created other works with hair. In 2013 I created an installation, "Fodder::Beauty" at Art Space which I did with hair again to comment on women, beauty, and feminicide. 

When allowed, rewarded my very first solo exhibition by the Taubman Museum, I search for funds for art, but that is always rewarded to the same groups, or for institutionalized artists being rewarded by institutions. As an artist and indigenous descendant, I understood from all angles the process of a historical exclusion that had created the impossible art-history timeline for our artists. I decided to create my solo exhibition mostly from hair. In “HAVE YOU SEEN the Dark Parrot” I propose a dialogue on the connections of historic and contemporary UNSEEN cultures lost under a disempowered art-history, consumed as othering objects, and the connection to issues such as the UNSEEN women of indigenous descendant consumed or sold as fetishized objects. I used hair as my material for a human element and/or a collective urn.