Art and war seem like antagonistic words, but here they come together in this interesting set of 37 Afghan carpets from the personal collection of curator Victor Nosek. 

Held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON), the exhibition "Afghanistan - carpets of peace and war" is based on MON's permanent collection of works. Unlike other cultural institutions, a museum's role, in addition to caring for and expanding its collection, is to create dialogues between its works and the exhibitions it holds. This is one of the Museum's proposals.

It is worth remembering that MON has the largest collection of Asian art in Latin America, following the donation of thousands of works years ago by diplomat and professor Fausto Godoy, which marked a new curatorial vocation. 

Space was then made in the collection for Asian, African and Latin American art, in line with the great museums of the world, making it distinct from the Eurocentric tendency that dominates Western culture. This initiative has positioned MON among the great international museums. 

In this vein, we are now bringing to our audience the ancient tradition of Afghan tapestry, which in recent decades has incorporated war themes into its traditional designs. Both themes are presented in this new exhibition, divided into two axes: peace and war.

More than appreciating the aesthetics, the show touches us by its proposal and leads us to perceive the world through the provocative gaze of denunciation. It offers visitors this unique experience of searching for meaning and reflecting on such a complex subject through the beauty of art.

Afghanistan is one of the most politically sensitive regions on the planet. Nestled between such diverse giants as Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran and China, its geographic location not only places it at the crossroads of great civilizations but also of some of the most important religions on the planet: Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, mainly.

Afghanistan is home to a very ancient civilization, which already existed as a Persian domain when Alexander III of Macedon, the Great, walked through the region and founded Balkh, one of his most advanced outposts in Asia, in 334 BCE. Part of the population still retains physical traces of their ancestral Greeks. This same population, with equally ancestral habits, is made up of a large cast of ethnic groups and tribes that resulted from the occupation by invaders of various origins – Persians, Greeks, Mongols, etc. – throughout their history, which have instilled, both genetically and in deep-rooted traditions, values ​​and concepts that each of them defends with fierce zeal.

Proud of their roots, these ethnic groups and tribes, which are divided between the Sunni and Shiite branches of Islam – approximately 90% are Sunni and 10% Shiite, roughly speaking – do not accept the preponderance of any other over them, no matter how large it may be in number, even though the Sunni Taliban, of the Pashtun ethnic group, currently dominate the government and public life and oppress other ethnic and religious groups. Afghans are even less accepting of interference from other cultures, and they remember the period when two of the largest empires of the 19th century, the Russian and the British, fought for hegemony over Central Asia in the region, which history has recorded as the “Great Game”.

It was this same spirit of resistance that was ignited in December 1979 when the Soviet Union, heeding the call of the communist government then in power in Afghanistan, invaded the country to support it in the fight against the mujahideen insurgents, made up of groups that rebelled against the oppression of the Marxist creed, which they understood to be a degradation of the values ​​of Islam. This was because the Soviets sought to impose their secular concepts, locked the mosques and prevented public worship. The resistance took on dramatic proportions when the Soviets abandoned Afghanistan in 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, leaving room for the intensification of confrontations between the hardened militants who had taken refuge in the mountains that make up the country's rugged geography. At the same time, Western troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States, occupied the country after the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, which, under the leadership of Osama bin Laden, were carried out by Al Qaeda, one of the most seasoned groups of the mujahideen.

After several political episodes that followed since then, with the departure of Western troops in August 2021, the Taliban came to power in Kabul. Part of the population that resists their designs has been seeking shelter in other parts of the planet, including Brazil, which already has around five thousand refugees.

"Afghanistan - rugs of peace and war" is the new project by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON), which is on display in the Eye Tower (first floor and second floor). The exhibition was curated by collector Victor Nosek, with the collaboration of professor and diplomat Fausto Godoy.

The exhibition brings together 37 rugs from Afghanistan depicting scenes of peace and war and reflecting different moments in the country's socio-political and cultural landscape. The exhibition also features 19 pieces of Afghan jewelry that are part of the daily life of the people from the regions where the rugs were made.

Afghan tribal war rugs are part of the "art as a portrait of war" tradition. 

They are a dramatic update of this tradition. They represented the Russo-Afghan war and have been produced by various semi-nomadic pastoral tribes, whose way of life remained unchanged for centuries. 

Weaved in the highlands when the snow melted, where Afghans had gone in search of pastures for their flocks, and in their permanent homes during the winter. 

The "living" carpets are the fruit of this way of life. 

The high-quality wool was dyed with natural dyes collected during the annual migration. Weavers, in the silence of their tents, free from interference, used simple horizontal looms fixed to the ground. The traditional themes, developed from memory, without prior drawing, are characteristic of each artist. Preferably created for their own use, the surplus is sold and the proceeds used to buy carnelian jewelry, stones used to ward off the evil eye. 

At first in timid appearances within the traditional themes, tanks, helicopters, jets and grenades soon occupied the entire composition. Tribal and contemporary, the war rugs in this exhibition belong to the first ten years of that war, between 1970-1980, when pastoral nomadism was still possible. The advent of endemic famine and the annihilation of the herds made nomadism and the resulting production of quality "living" carpets impossible! 

May this exhibition contribute to reflection and humanity finally achieve the peace and progress it is destined for! 

Victor Nosek 
Collection and Curatorship 

dec. 1980
Handwoven rug made on horizontal looms using sheep and camel wool dyed with natural pigments. Mane and tail hair from horses are used for the side cords
129 x 92 cm

dec. 1960/70
Handwoven rug made on horizontal looms using sheep and camel wool dyed with natural pigments. Mane and tail hair from horses are used for the side cords
210 x 109 cm

déc. 1980
Handwoven rug made on horizontal looms using sheep and camel wool dyed with natural pigments. Mane and tail hair from horses are used for the side cords
143 x 98 cm

dec. 1980
Handwoven rug made on horizontal looms using sheep and camel wool dyed with natural pigments. Mane and tail hair from horses are used for the side cords
152 x 92 cm

dec. 1960/70
Handwoven rug made on horizontal looms using sheep and camel wool dyed with natural pigments. Mane and tail hair from horses are used for the side cords
194 x 102 cm

"Afghanistan - rugs of peace and war" is the new project at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON). The exhibition can be seen from October 24 at the Eye Tower (first floor and second floor). The exhibition was curated by collector Victor Nosek, with the collaboration of professor and diplomat Fausto Godoy.

The exhibition brings together 37 rugs from Afghanistan depicting scenes of peace and war and reflecting different moments in the country's socio-political and cultural landscape. The exhibition will also feature 19 pieces of Afghan jewelry that are part of the daily life of the people in the regions where the rugs were made.

"Today, a museum is not just a place for preservation, but a space for dialog and reflection. The Oscar Niemeyer Museum exemplifies this role with a collection that ranges from art to historical and anthropological items, expanding the physical barriers of what a museum space is," says Luciana Casagrande Pereira, Paraná's Secretary of State for Culture. 

"Our aim is also to broaden cultural references. In this way, MON highlights the richness of Asian and African cultures, which make up one of the largest specialized collections in the Americas, presented both in long-term exhibitions and in itinerant exhibitions throughout Paraná," says the secretary.

MON director Juliana Vosnika says that the exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to see the ancient tradition of Afghan tapestry up close. "It's worth remembering that MON has the largest collection of Asian art in Latin America, following the donation of thousands of works years ago by diplomat and professor Fausto Godoy, which marked a new curatorial vocation," he says. 

Space was then made in the collection for Asian, African and Latin American art, in line with the great museums of the world, making it distinct from the Eurocentric tendency that dominates Western culture. This initiative has positioned the Oscar Niemeyer Museum among the great international museums. 

"In this vein, we are now bringing to our audience the ancient tradition of Afghan tapestry, which in recent decades has incorporated war themes into its traditional designs," says Juliana. Both themes are presented in this new exhibition, divided into two axes: peace and war.

Fausto Godoy, who served as Brazil's ambassador to Afghanistan for around two years, talks about the political importance of the exhibition, and curator Victor Nosek explains that the rugs that reflect the theme of peace are the oldest, and represent pastoral scenes, nature in general or geometric shapes. 

Tribal and contemporary, the war rugs reflect the period between 1970-1980 and will be exhibited separately on the second floor of the Tower. "We need to look at them, perceive that aesthetic and reflect on how it is possible to create beauty in war," says Godoy.

He points out that Afghanistan is one of the most politically sensitive regions on the planet. "Nestled between giants as diverse as Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran and China, its geographical location not only places it at the crossroads of great civilizations, but also of some of the most important religions on the planet: Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, in particular," he says.

The collector and curator of the exhibition explains that Afghan tribal war rugs are part of the tradition: art as a portrait of war. "They are a dramatic update of this tradition," says Nosek. 

According to him, these pieces represent the early years of the Russo-Afghan war and were produced by different semi-nomadic pastoral tribes, whose way of life remained unchanged for centuries. "May this exhibition contribute to reflection and humanity finally achieve the peace and progress to which it is destined," says the curator.

Afghanistan - rugs of peace and war

MON is alongside major museums in Brazil and around the world on the Google Arts & Culture platform. Visit our exhibitions in virtual format. 

Find out more about this exhibition on the Google Arts & Culture platform.

The unprecedented exhibition held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, "Cinema Dreams: Arte para a Sétima Arte", should inspire designers and delight cinephiles by bringing together these two artistic strands.

Movie posters are similar in most parts of the world, but in Fidel Castro's Cuba, artists had total freedom to create new images of classics from the seventh century. Encouraged to experiment with abstract, minimalist and symbolic forms, designers made illustrations as striking as the advertised films themselves.

Here we have a rich collection of these records, which, through incredible drawings, reveal peculiar ways of looking. This creative diversity was influenced by Pop Art, psychedelia and European and Oriental art.

Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Recognized internationally by UNESCO for their value and importance, Cuban film posters are notorious for their creativity and unquestionable graphic quality. 

For all these reasons, they areconsidered important pieces of art, not only as advertising tools, but also for their cultural relevance.

By bringing this significant exhibition to visitors, MON ratifies its mission: to collect and exhibit visual arts, architecture and design, providing transformative experiences and dialogues with the public. 

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
CEO of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

Cuban film posters have been recognized by Unesco and included in the "Memory of the World" register, a distinction that highlights their heritage value and cultural importance. This international recognition highlights the unique aesthetic and impact of Cuban graphic design on the world of cinema.

This inscription recognizes the artistic and cultural contribution of Cuban posters, which have accompanied Cuban cinema since its inception.

Influence on future generations: UNESCO recognition is seen as a source of inspiration for young creators and designers, who can be inspired by the ingenuity and graphic quality of these works.

Importance of digitization and preservation: the "Memory of the World" inscription also highlighted the need to digitize and preserve these posters for future generations.

Unesco, as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, plays a key role in promoting international cooperation and safeguarding world heritage.

Eduardo Muñoz Bachs was born in 1937 in Valencia, Spain.
​His parents, who fought against fascism, fled Spain and Europe after Franco and Hitler's victories. They settled in Cuba in 1941.
Since childhood, Eduardo has been interested in drawing.
​In 1952, he began as an apprentice artist at the CMQ-TV radio and TV network. In 1957, he worked on animated films for an advertising agency. He joined ICAIC in 1959, in the animation department, and in 1960 he created the institution's first poster, for the movie Historias de la Revolución. In 1961, he moved to the poster department. In the following years, he also worked for other government agencies. In 1970, he designed the cover of Cuba Magazine.
​Bachs was not only a prolific movie poster designer - he also wrote and illustrated numerous children's books and created record covers.
​In the 1980s, he collaborated with magazines such as El Muñe, Cómicos, Bohemia, Prisma and Revolución y Cultura.
​His movie posters have a very personal stamp, breaking with traditional graphic codes. He created his own style, full of color and comic naivety. He is Cuba's most prolific poster artist and is considered one of Cuba's greatest graphic artists. He died in 2001 in Havana.

René Azcuy Cárdenas was born in Havana in 1939. At the age of 16, he began his artistic studies at the National School of Fine Arts in San Alejandro and then at the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Havana. He began his career as an illustrator in advertising agencies.
​In 1963, one of the founders of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC) invited him to join the team of graphic designers, entrusting him with the creation of advertisements and press releases for the national film distributor. He quickly went on to create movie posters and political propaganda.
​His first posters used colored illustrations, but in 1970 he found his characteristic graphic style, which earned him the nickname "Negro Azcuy" because he worked almost exclusively in black and white. He used photographs from magazines, cut out in close-up and with strong contrast.
​In 1983, he joined the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), linked to the Ministry of Culture, and participated in the drafting of Law 106 for the social improvement of Cuban artists, enacted in 1988.
​In 1992, he moved to Mexico, where he dedicated himself exclusively to teaching at the Universidad Benemérita de Puebla before reuniting with his family in Miami, where he passed away in 2019.

He was born in Placetas, Villa Clara, Cuba, on April 12, 1943.
​He began his career at the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC).
​In the 1970s, at the height of the Cuban Revolution, a new type of communicator emerged: the graphic designer. The art of the poster, with its use of color, collages, contrasted photographs, blunt texts and slogans, has become an essential means of communication.
​Mesa helped make the movie poster an innovative form of expression, breaking with traditional advertising styles. His work has been exhibited all over the world and is studied by art students at various universities in Latin America.
​In the 1950s, he studied commercial and architectural painting at the Garcés Academy in Havana. Between 1960 and 1962, he attended the National School of Art Teachers and, from 1963 to 1966, he studied at the San Alejandro National School of Plastic Arts. He majored in graphic design at the School of Design and, between 1975 and 1976, studied Art History at the Faculty of Arts and Letters at the University of Havana.
​He has worked mainly with set design, graphic design and painting.
​Between 1962 and 1969, he was a set designer at the ICAIC. From 1969 to 1991, he was art director of the magazine Cine Cubano.
​Between 1986 and 1991, he worked as a designer at the Domingo Ravenet Art Gallery. In 1990, he became a member of UNEAC.
​He lived and worked for a time in Spain and since 1991 has lived in Austin, Texas (USA).

Born in 1941 and naturalized Mexican in 2003, he grew up in Cuba. He graduated in Art History from the University of Havana and began his career in 1957 at an advertising agency.
​He soon went on to create political posters for revolutionary campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s.
​In 1968, he joined the ICAIC, where he created one of his most iconic posters - one of the few to use photography - with the famous portrait of Che Guevara by Alberto Korda, multiplying Che's image against the red background of the revolution.
​That same year, he also produced posters for Cuban and foreign films as an independent artist.
​In the early 1970s, he officially joined ICAIC's team of designers.
​With a unique and apparently simple style, ñiko has taught graphic design at universities in Cuba, Spain and Mexico from the 1970s to the present day.
​With the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989, Cuba faced a serious economic and social crisis, and the production of public posters virtually ceased.
​To continue his practice, he accepted an invitation to teach at the University of Veracruz in Mexico and left Cuba for good.

He is a member of the International Council of Graphic Design Associations (ICOGRADA) and has held the Cuban National Culture Award since 1983. In 2018, his works were declared Cultural Heritage of the Cuban Nation.
​He is also a member of the National System of Art Creators of FONCA (Mexico). In 2021, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Veracruz.
​He currently lives and works in Zoncuantla, Coatepec, Veracruz, Mexico.
​According to ñiko, a poster is a whisper, not a shout - it should convince, seduce and catch the eye.
​For him, the poster is demonstrative, suggestive, reflective and also a form of entertainment: "The poster must, above all, communicate the artist's personal passion. He anticipates and perpetuates the images of his time; he creates and participates in history".
He says that if there is a secret in the poster, it lies in the ideas, in the communication, even before the aesthetic process:
"Although beauty is also a means of achieving and affirming what we have to say."

Sign your posters with your full name: Servando Cabrera Moreno

Servando was, above all, a painter.
​He graduated from the San Alejandro Academy and also studied at the Art Student's League in New York and La Grande Chaumière in Paris. He exhibited for the first time at the Lyceum in Havana in 1943 and took part in various biennials in Venice, Mexico and São Paulo, as well as several group exhibitions.
​He has won numerous awards and his works are in museums, galleries and private collections all over the world.
​He was a close friend of Alfredo Guevara (founder of ICAIC and the Havana Latin American Film Festival), with whom he became even closer after meeting in Paris. They worked together on the documentary El Mégano (1954), together with filmmakers influenced by Italian neorealism.
​In 1979, Guevara commissioned Servando to design the poster for the Cuban film Retrato de Teresa, by Pastor Vega.
​As a tribute to Servando, the poster for the 35th edition of the Latin American Film Festival featured his work "Moncada" and "Cordillera", two of his most expressive paintings, exhibited on the ninth floor of the ICAIC, as designed by Guevara.
​During the so-called "gray period" of the 1970s - marked by repression of homosexuality and cultural experimentalism - Guevara was an important supporter of Servando.

Antonio Fernández Reboiro was born in Cuba in 1935 to Spanish immigrants. He studied medicine for six years before turning to architecture and design at the University of Havana.
​He began his career at the magazine Havana Picture Guide and collaborated with architect Ricardo Porro on the construction of Cuba's National Art School.
​In 1963, he was hired by ICAIC's artistic director, who was putting together a new team of designers.
​For two decades, he produced countless posters. The ICAIC offered artists a space of creative freedom, and Reboiro developed a visual imagination influenced by Art Nouveau, Art Deco, Op Art, Pop Art and psychedelia. His posters often distanced themselves from the content of the films, functioning as visual enigmas with symbolic, abstract, figurative or surrealist elements.
​Its main characteristic was the explosive and artistic use of bright, vivid colors.
​Persecuted for his homosexuality, he went into exile in 1982 during an exhibition at the Cannes Film Festival. He lived in France and then Spain, where he continued his career creating posters and visual identities for theaters, operas, ballets and festivals.
​In 1998, he set up his graphics studio in Miami. In the 2010s, he devoted himself entirely to painting.
​He passed away in 2020.
​His works are in the collections of museums such as the MoMA (New York), the Museum of Advertising and the Pompidou Center (Paris), the National Gallery (London), the Poster Museum (Warsaw), the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami, the Museo Carlos Maside (Spain) and many others around the world.

Azcuy, Bachs, Cabrera Moreno, Julioeloy, Ñiko, Reboiro

The exhibition " Sonhos de Cinema: Arte para a Sétima Arte" presents a selection of 75 posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur with assistant curatorship by Jhon Voese, the exhibition organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum can be seen in Room 11 as from September 13.

Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the pieces take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design from the 1960s and 1970s.

Before the 1960s, Cuban posters were essentially commercial and influenced by the United States. However, after Fidel Castro came to power, it became a political and cultural instrument. In March 1959, after the revolution, the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC) was created. This cultural organization played a central role in the production of film posters, inspiring the creation of original works signed by their authors and giving rise to a unique style and a distinctive graphic school. The cultural posters were mostly dedicated to cinema and documentaries, which Fidel Castro considered essential tools for educating the Cuban people.

Under Castro's leadership, Cuban designers enjoyed total freedom, freeing themselves from the American model, which focused on the name of the film, the main actors and a scene from the film, a model still used in many countries. This freedom allowed Cuban designers to reinterpret the films independently and go beyond traditional graphic codes. Influenced by modernist movements, they were inspired by Pop Art, kinetic art, surrealist collage and psychedelia. American graphic design, especially comics, magazine covers and artists such as Saul Bass and Andy Warhol, also left their mark.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Cuba imported many Western films, mainly European. Cuban designers adopted screen printing, which has become a feature of Cuban graphic culture. This process, similar to artistic screen printing, involved the use of stencils between the ink and the support. Each artist conceived the design, created their colors and produced the poster, which strongly influenced the style of the posters. Technical restrictions, such as the size of the print, and the limitation of volumes to large areas of bright colors with sharp outlines also shaped the graphic style of Cuban posters.

Author: Reboiro
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

El Discreto Encanto De La Burguesia, undated

Author: Ñiko
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

Author: Azcuy
Silkscreen
75 x 52 cm
Collection of Jean-François Couvreur

MON holds exhibition of Cuban movie poster designs 

The unprecedented exhibition held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, "Cinema Dreams: Art for Seventh Art", presents a selection of 75 iconic posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur and assistant curated by Jhon Voese, the exhibition will open in Room 11 on September 13 at noon, with free admission at that time.

"Cuban posters are true works of art that tell stories beyond cinema. We hope that this exhibition will bring MON's audience closer to innovative graphic production, marked by creative freedom and dialog between cultures," says the Secretary of State for Culture, Luciana Casagrande Pereira.

"The exhibition should inspire designers and delight cinephiles by bringing together these two artistic strands," says MON's director Juliana Vosnika. "Movie posters are similar in most parts of the world, but in Fidel Castro's Cuba, artists had total freedom to create unpublished images of classics of the seventh art," he says.

"We have here a rich collection of these records, which, through incredible drawings, reveal peculiar ways of looking. This creative diversity was influenced by Pop Art, psychedelia and European and Oriental art," says Juliana.

Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the posters take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design in the 1960s and 1970s, highlighting the influence of cinema and political culture in Latin America. The pieces are original, many signed by the authors. Printed in silkscreen, some posters are in black and white and others in polychrome. 

The exhibition not only highlights Cuba's rich artistic tradition, but also connects the public to cultural practices that transcend borders, establishing a link between graphic design and the historical narratives of Latin America. This show ratifies MON's vocation to promote exhibitions that establish dialogues between art and design.

According to the curator, in the 1960s and 1970s Cuba imported many Western films, mainly European. "Cuban designers have adopted screen printing, which has become a feature of that country's graphic culture. This process, similar to artistic screen printing, involved the use of stencils between the ink and the support. Each artist conceived the design, created their colors and produced the poster, which strongly influenced the style of the posters," says Jean-François Couvreur.

The exhibition " Sonhos de Cinema: Arte para a Sétima Arte" presents a selection of 75 posters created by renowned Cuban graphic artists. Curated by Jean-François Couvreur with assistant curatorship by Jhon Voese, the exhibition organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum can be seen in Room 11 as from September 13.
Most of the posters were made entirely by hand, guaranteeing rich texture, intense colors and authentic features. Created by artists such as René Azcuy Cárdenas, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs, Antonio Pérez González (Ñiko) and Antonio Fernández Reboiro, the pieces take you on a journey through Cuban graphic design from the 1960s and 1970s.

Cinema Dreams: Art for the Seventh Art

MON is alongside major museums in Brazil and worldwide on the Google Arts & Culture platform. Visit our exhibitions in virtual format.

Learn more about this exhibition on the Google Arts & Culture platform.

Brazilian artist Mariana Palma represents a powerful and promising generation of women who are conquering an ever-increasing space in contemporary art. In a poetic way, she subtly evokes nature in a way that is as beautiful as it is unique. 

To house his solo show at MON, the iconic Eye was chosen as the main exhibition space, which will certainly make the visitor's experience even more intense and interesting. 

Upon entering the immersion proposed by the artist, the public will encounter not only works of art, but also the possibility of perceiving new meanings. Her work, with its lightness and sophistication, involves the viewer.

The exhibition "Through" evokes the idea of crossing layers, fabrics, images or time. Her works flow, they carry movement. It's a crossing that doesn't hurt, but reveals. The feminine gaze and sensitivity are present at all times.

Each exhibition held by MON in the Eye space is unique. What the public sees is always the sum of the talent of a great artist with a unique and dazzling exhibition space, considered in itself a work of art, designed by the master Oscar Niemeyer.

Over more than two decades, several important exhibitions have been held there. However, each of them takes on a unique character, with a lot of drama and strength, as is the case now with Mariana Palma.

Grandiose, the exhibition goes beyond the confines of the Eye and invades other spaces in the Museum, such as the staircases and the rooms of the Tower, proposing an even greater challenge. The artist invites visitors to immerse themselves in her work. Enjoy.

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
CEO of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

After her participation in the exhibition "Afinidades II - Elas!" at the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (MON) in 2022 and 2023, and her installation "Transparências" on the trees in the Museum's gardens as part of the "MON sem Paredes" project, Mariana Palma returns with a solo exhibition at the Eye. It's like a mini-retrospective, in which the public will be able to discover 19 canvases covering the years 2008 to 2025 and two large installations: "Fluir", in the Eye, and another (untitled), on the stairs of the tower. Finally, a series of five projections in one of the rooms of the tower leading to the Eye will show a final angle of a complex work, whose central theme is nature, which invites the public to cross over, to mentally go to the other side of existence to meet (their) dream.

"The title of the exhibition, 'Through', has to do with this idea of crossing - layers, fabrics, images, time. It's a word that carries movement and a certain lightness, a crossing that doesn't hurt, but reveals. I think she synthesizes well this game between what is seen and what is insinuated in my works," says Mariana Palma. 

The title "Através" also evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". In this MON exhibition, the mirrors are the 'transparencies' of the works - it can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious. It is an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could - perhaps - free himself from reality. Mariana Palma confronts us with Einstein's relativity, in which time and space no longer offer fixed points of reference. What remains stable? Just "the thread of my thoughts". Mariana invites us to penetrate the meanders of Alice's consciousness, in other words, "somewhere between my memory and my imagination". His compositions, whether in his paintings, his photographic installations on veils or his projections, are made up of recognizable themes, but put together in this way, they create a new world that stimulates the imagination.

Mariana is one of the great artists who have explored transparency in their work. Among these artists is Francis Picabia, known for his "transparencies" of the 1920s, superimposed images inspired by ancient painting. In 2016-2017, with "L'observatoire de la lumière", through a play of colors, projections, reflections, transparencies and contrasts, both internal and external, Daniel Buren showed Frank Gehry's Vuitton Foundation building in Paris in a new light. Mariana uses the images with which she has been composing for many years, leaves and flowers of all ages, elements pushed by the tides, fabrics and tiles that she superimposes. Although perspective is not her theme, the space of her works remains profound. As the different images she stages, which slide over each other, have no apparent connection or logic, their encounter raises enigmas that we try to solve. Automatism of the unconscious? Applying the poetic principle of rhyme to visual forms? Mariana's "Transparencies", made up of intersecting figures, are an illustration of this approach to mental mechanics with the effect of memory and wear and tear. They are imbroglios of pirated images with a botticelliangrace.

Mariana Palma's "Transparencies" series communicates the sensation that the artist creates on her canvases. In an installation presented in a group of trees in front of the MON entrance for the "MON without Walls" project in 2022 and today on the stairs of the Museum tower, the viewer is invited to participate and see themselves in the midst of the scenes produced. In addition to the juxtapositions achieved through composition and the distance between the fabrics, the audience becomes another element of the work. The path created by and between the fabrics opens up paths and invitations to access new perceptions and visions of the same work, which blends in with the viewer and the space. 

In the "waterfall" (the artist didn't actually name the installation) that cascades down the floors of the Eye tower, in the central space of the staircase, there is a cataract of still lifes that parade from top to bottom, creating vertigo and contributing to the overall mystery of this exhibition. To further confuse the issue, the artist extinguished all the colors to keep only blue, turning this series into a vertical flow that seems to suck up the entire history of art and, without a doubt, as a poetic and harsh wink to the effects of climate change.

On the central theme of her work, the artist confides: "Nature has always been very central to my work, right from the start. Even when I wasn't directly painting flowers or natural elements, there was a relationship with the organic, with growth, with the body as landscape. But it was in the 2000s, with the watercolors, that this presence of nature intensified. Then, in more recent photographs and paintings, it came through even more strongly - but no longer as a literal representation, but as poetic matter. Dried leaves, fruits, animals, lichens, dust, everything comes in as a repertoire that speaks of life and death, of transformation". 

"Fluir", the centerpiece of the exhibition 

"The work 'Fluir' has a very special place in this exhibition. It was a turning point, almost a dress rehearsal for what was to come. In it, I place two overlapping fabrics in front of a box with water and mirrors, which forms a kind of perpendicular light box - a cinema inside out - creating an image from the reflection of the sparkle, which is always moving. It's as if it's breathing, and the light that emanates from her takes over the entire vault of the Museum, guiding the exhibition.

She ended up becoming the center of the exhibition, not just physically, but conceptually as well. From there, I organized the other works as developments - some quieter, others more intense, all in dialogue with this idea of image as apparition. I thought of each section of the show as a sensory environment, which the visitor passes through - as the title already suggests. Everything reveals itself little by little, like diving into a fabric and finding other layers, other landscapes," explains Mariana Palma. 

With a strong reference to vanitas, a style of painting produced between the 16th and 17th centuries in which the compositions sought to prove the transience of life, mixing symbols of ephemerality and death, this installation on the stairs and the 19 paintings in the Olho room explore this space of present and posthumous memory. Mariana Palma creates unique pictorial spaces, constructed by juxtaposing elements from distant families. On the large canvases in saturated colors, tiles coexist with foliage, theater curtains with flowers, printed fabrics, draped and frayed. Natural and artificial elements create unlikely hybrids. The result is unexpectedly harmonious and enigmatic compositions that, by causing a certain strangeness, invite the viewer to take the time to observe. Contemplation reveals genetic clues. The grandeur, the drama, the emotional exuberance, the vitality, the construction of movement and the use of contrasting textures and luxurious materials reveal the dialogue with the baroque painting of the 16th and 17th centuries, evoking reflections on sensuality, the ephemerality of beauty and the bombardment of images today. The use of pure colors is reminiscent of Flemish painters, while the subtle perspectival effects suggest a mastery of Renaissance lessons.

Mariana Palma revolutionized the notion of still life and the evocative power of the objects she portrays. This genre re-emerged after a millennium of eclipse, during which things were no longer portrayed for their own sake, but always at the service of religion or political power. It was at the dawn of modern capitalism that painters, particularly Flemish ones, began to depict "commodities". They made "things" the stars of their paintings, without referring to their use by characters, religious or otherwise. They regained power. The French painter Chardin established himself as a master of the genre in the 18th century, giving it its letters of nobility.

But the term remains, and its connotation masks the fact that immovable objects can easily inspire dreams, imagination, action or doubt. More than a fruit basket or a butcher's stall, objects are witnesses to times of opulence, reminders of our mortal condition. In her still lifes and vanitas, Mariana Palma adds other dimensions. The transparencies in her paintings add a virtual third dimension, which she materializes even more clearly in her floating projection or print-on-veil installations.

In a small room in the MON tower, five projections are presented. They are flowers, each one on its own, in vibrant colors, with stems practically devoid of foliage, the base of which we can't see. Are they on the ground or in a vase? We'll never know. We won't know the context either, because they stand out in the darkness. The only element that breaks the seriousness of this staging is the wind that makes them vibrate. They become almost human, both in their size and in their strong, impartial presence, each one unique. These powerful videos evoke the extremes of human emotion and the experience of consciousness. The proximity to the staircase installation can also lead us to think about birth and death, themes often present in the artist's work. Here, she expands time and explores the movements of human consciousness with a sense of the sublime that seems inspired by Renaissance painters. In an incredible feat, the almost nothingness of this "animated still life" becomes a whole, perhaps metaphorically showing us the pulse of life. We can't escape basic questions: what's going on? There will be no answer, no narrative. Mariana doesn't tell a story that can be written as a short story: she creates sequences of moving images - rather than furniture. Each one is a complete whole, like a poem or a piece of music.

What we call baroque is irregular, singular, bizarre. The artifice gains an autonomy it didn't have before. By analyzing the way in which the Baroque image was constructed, we discover not the way in which reality actually appears, but the way in which all images of things, even natural and sensory ones, are constructed as sets, according to principles that are not those of the structure of the thing represented, but those of image-making, so much so that the very world in which we live seems to dissolve into a series of images that correspond to nothing other than them. This is one of the sensations that visitors will have at the MON when they visit this exhibition that embraces the volumes of the Eye and the stairs of the tower that lead to it.

Baroque philosophy enables this knowledge of the fundamentally illusory nature of the world, thanks to which we can rationally perceive the need to seek our salvation in an act that, in turn, no longer admits of rational justification.

The baroque critique of appearances restores them to themselves. An entirely new game opens up, where these appearances produce their effects, perpetually referring to each other on their own level, without claiming the power to manifest anything beyond themselves. There are a thousand possibilities of other appearances that this baroque game of images evokes with the thousand effects that its game constantly produces. Isn't it this philosophical pleasure of knowing appearances for themselves, through the play of their construction, of their complex mutual references, that ultimately characterizes the work of the great Baroque artists?

"I was hooked on the Baroque universe from an early age - both the European and our own, from Minas Gerais. I've always been struck by this excess, this drama and, at the same time, this delicacy of detail, of light, of superimposition," Mariana adds. "My relationship with the Baroque is less like a direct reference and more like an atmosphere. I'm interested in this construction of excess, in the tension between the visible and the invisible, between the sublime and the grotesque. The Baroque taught me to think of the image as something that overflows - that doesn't contain itself. And this appears in my works in the details, the layers, the light, the volumes that insinuate themselves even in two-dimensionality".

Mariana Palma's exhibition "Através" is breathtaking. The artist has explored the most challenging spaces in Oscar Niemeyer's architecture - the Eye, the staircase and one of the lower rooms of the Eye's downward curve - to give us a master class on her vision of nature, a decidedly contemporary baroque style that will open up the widest possible space for visitors' imaginations.

The work of Brazilian contemporary artist Mariana Palma can be seen in the Eye and in the Tower's spaces in the unprecedented solo show "Através", organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum. Curated by Marc Pottier, the exhibition brings together large-scale fabric canvases, installations and videos, providing the public with an immersive experience, available from September 13.

Mariana has works in MON's collection and in recent years has taken part in exhibitions such as "Afinidades" and "MON sem Paredes". The show's main work, the large and surprising installation "Fluir", was developed especially for the Eye space. 

The title "Through" of the exhibition by Brazilian artist Mariana Palma evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". 

In this unprecedented exhibition, held by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, the mirrors are the works' transparencies, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious. 

It is an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could - perhaps - free himself from reality. 

The artist confronts us with Einstein's relativity, in which time and space no longer offer fixed points of reference. What remains stable? Just the thread of his thoughts. Mariana invites us to penetrate the meanders of Alice's consciousness, in other words, "somewhere between my memory and my imagination". 

His compositions, whether in his paintings, his photographic installations on veils or his projections, are made up of recognizable themes, but put together in this way, they create a new world that stimulates the imagination.

The exhibition is breathtaking. The artist has explored the most challenging spaces in Oscar Niemeyer's architecture - the Eye, the staircase and the lower rooms of the Eye's downward curve - to give us a master class on her vision of nature, a decidedly contemporary baroque style that will open up the widest possible space for visitors' imaginations.

Mixed techniques on canvas
200 x 350 cm
Banco Itaú collection

Oil and acrylic paint on canvas
95 x 95 cm
Daniela e Alfredo Villela collection

Oil and acrylic paint on canvas
170 x 170 cm
Rosana e Arthur Pollis collection

A brand new exhibition by Mariana Palma is MON's new project for the Eye space

"Through" is an unprecedented solo show organized by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, which brings the work of contemporary artist Mariana Palma to the Tower's spaces and Eye. Curated by Marc Pottier, the exhibition brings together large canvases, installations and videos, allowing the public to immerse themselves in the works. The opening will take place on September 13 at noon, with free admission at that time.

"We are immensely happy to welcome Mariana Palma to the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, a beautiful opportunity for the Museum's public to immerse themselves in a rare artistic experience. His works reveal delicacy and strength at the same time, and invite us to go through layers of color, fabric and imagination," says the Secretary of State for Culture, Luciana Casagrande Pereira.

"Brazilian artist Mariana Palma represents a powerful and promising generation of women who are conquering an ever-increasing space in contemporary art. In a poetic way, she subtly evokes nature in a way that is as beautiful as it is unique," says MON's director Juliana Vosnika. 

"Upon entering the immersion proposed by the artist, the public will encounter not only works of art, but also the possibility of perceiving new meanings. His work, with its lightness and sophistication, involves the viewer," he says. "The exhibition evokes the idea of crossing, be it layers, fabrics, images or time. His works flow, they carry movement," says Juliana. 

Mariana has works in MON's collection and in recent years has taken part in exhibitions such as "Afinidades" and "MON sem Paredes". His works create unique pictorial spaces, built by juxtaposing different elements. 

Large canvases with saturated colors can be reminiscent of theater curtains with flowers and printed, draped and frayed fabrics. Photographs mixed with paintings and large-scale embroidery create a contemporary still life made up of living and decaying elements, elements of classical painting and objects considered residual, mixing the noble and the residual. 

The main work in this exhibition, "Fluir", was developed especially for the Eye space. It's a large installation using fabrics, water, broken mirrors and special lighting. The aim was to create the illusion of a large waterfall invading the room.

The Tower's stairwell has been given a large installation of fabrics printed with images. In the Araucária Space, under the Eye, the public will find videos with high-definition projections of images of flowers that permeate all of the artist's work.

"The work 'Fluir' ended up becoming the centerpiece of the exhibition, not only physically, but conceptually as well," explains Mariana. "From there, I organized the other works as offshoots - some quieter, others more intense, all in dialogue with this idea of image as apparition. Everything reveals itself little by little, like diving into a fabric and finding other layers, other landscapes," she says. 

The curator says that the title "Through" evokes the passage through the looking glass, as imagined by Lewis Carroll in his famous novel "Alice in Wonderland". "In this MON exhibition, the mirrors are the works' transparencies, which can be interpreted as a metaphor for self-discovery and confrontation with the unconscious," says Marc Pottier. "It's an exploration of the passage from a rational world to a more absurd and illogical one, where the usual rules are inverted and man could perhaps free himself from reality," he comments.

Born in São Paulo in 1979, she began her bachelor's degree in fine arts in 1998 at the Armando Álvares Penteado Foundation (FAAP), completing it in 2000. The artist has had solo exhibitions in Florianópolis, Recife, Curitiba, Ribeirão Preto and various art galleries. In 2006 she took part in seven group exhibitions, including Rumos Artes Visuais. In previous years, her works have been shown in 21 group exhibitions.

She has received several awards, such as the Solo Exhibition Award from SESC Ribeirão Preto in 2003 and the Acquisition Awards from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Campinas, the Ribeirão Preto Art Museum and Casa do Olhar in Santo André in 2003, 2005 and 2006, respectively. She has participated in projects with Albano Alfonso, Sandra Cinto and Eduardo Brandão, among other artists. She is an artist who dialogues with the world of color in her work and becomes numb to it, with a great wealth of detail. Based on the construction of pictorial spaces, he works with the juxtaposition of diverse elements and techniques, in a desire to refine the language of painting and express his concerns.

Através - Mariana Palma

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Much more than just an object of contemplation, art is a powerful tool for changing how something is perceived, overcoming established standards, and seeking new values.

This is the case with the exhibition "Pure Gold," presented by the Oscar Niemeyer Museum, a thought-provoking collection of works that unites designers from different countries in a common universal reflection: humanity's relationship with nature.

Upcycling has gained traction worldwide by proposing different approaches to processing discarded materials and creating new, valuable products. In addition to raising awareness of alternative production techniques, we see examples of what can be done here.

It is no coincidence that, in addition to this exhibition, the MON is simultaneously holding other exhibitions that address the same issue. The reinterpretation is present in the adjacent rooms, both with the Mexican artist Gabriel de la Mora and the Brazilian artist Barrão, both artists with similar approaches to discussion.

Here, in dialogue with the Museum's permanent collection, seven design works from the collection are featured in the exhibition, offering visitors the opportunity for comparison. When displayed side by side, they reveal that there is no aesthetic or functional difference between those using conventional or recycled materials.

We understand that what has become urgent and urgent is not the presentation of magical solutions, but an invitation to reflect on the subject, through intimate and necessary reflection. As a living space for exchange, the museum allows each of us this moment, something made possible through art.

Juliana Vellozo Almeida Vosnika
Director-President of the Oscar Niemeyer Museum

Pure Gold or: Why It Is Worthwhile to Sometimes Pay More Attention to Domestic Waste

“Bayern Munich are playing today in shirts made of rubbish.” This was a headline in the Bild newspaper in November 2016 for a pre-match report on the German football Bundesliga game between Bayern and 1899 Hoffenheim. Of course, this did not mean second-hand shirts from a collection of old clothes, but, as the report said, shirts made completely of “rubbish from the oceans” – “of 28 old plastic bottles that were fished out of the sea.” The report continued: “With these shirts, sports’ outfitter Adidas and the environmental campaigners Parley want to warn us about the pollution of the seas. Each year 20 million tons of plastic rubbish are thrown into the sea, and it takes a shocking 600 years for this to decompose.”1

 Even if this initiative was not motivated solely by concern for the environment, and Adidas probably will have had important marketing interests too, this use of resources is one example for the increasingly dynamic development of recycling technologies, and also for the high levels of acceptance of and appreciation for widely available recycled products. 

This was not always the case. It is not so long ago that the word recycling conjured up images of paper that had the colour of potato peelings, or shredded street surfaces, seen as quick fixes or a form of replacement material that should never be used wherever any aesthetic standards needed to be taken into account. This has now fundamentally changed. Nearly every day, we can read about new innovative products made entirely of “upcycled” plastic, old jeans, porcelain, rubber, and many other materials – presented not just in the business news, but also under the heading of “research and technology”. This means that the products discussed are not all semi-manufactured or basic products like toilet paper or bricks2, but also high-end articles in the furniture and textiles industries, products where both technical and aesthetic quality are decisive for commercial success. 

Prototypes for this strategy would include Philippe Starck’s Hudson Chair and Herman Miller’s Aeron Chair. These two chairs, and many more recycled products, are based on reusing materials that have been used before to make more or less the same kind of product, and that are first returned to their original state as mash, liquid, powder or fibre, even if they will again become chairs in their new shape and form. In terms of the production process, therefore, these products are not very different from tried and tested grey-brown recycled paper; and yet the modern textiles of a sports’ outfitter and the simple office-use stationery from a paper mill are in fact worlds apart. Aesthetic enhancement is one key development and difference. At the Cebit computer and technology fair in 2017, the Japanese company Epson presented a piece of equipment that worked with the so-called PaperLab process. The first step is to shred printed “old” paper, and then the shredded paper that this produces is transformed into new paper at the rate of 720 sheets per hour, with almost no need for water.3

It can be fairly assumed that it will not be long before decentrally operating machines like this Epson will be applied to other fields and technologies of production within domestic households. One example is 3D printers, which are now widely used. They can be fed with sorted and finely ground (in our own homes) household goods, and then perform whatever domestic needs are at hand, from making spare parts to small repairs. The necessary programming skills will not be a problem, as Generation Minecraft already has these today. 

But we have not yet come quite so far. At present, these recycling technologies are still used centrally or at least within the spheres of influence of the companies that make these goods (Adidas, Emeco, Herman Miller, Epson). This in turn means that access is relatively limited and usually quite expensive. Just how expensive the use of this kind of process can be and how that will influence end-user prices, is shown in the case of an attempt to use recycling to transform one of the most significant “environmental polluters” of recent decades into an environmentally friendly product. The company Original Food, based in Freiburg, Germany, wanted to produce compostable coffee capsules as an alternative to the Nespresso version with high aluminium content that has led to around 4,000 tons of capsule trash each year.4 This Original Food initiative sounds like a piece of good news, but the problem is that the price of the environmentally friendly capsule is 20 per cent higher than Nestlé’s product – and also lacks the clout of the “womanizer” George Clooney. Launching a new product could be simpler. 

Difficulties notwithstanding, these examples show that, given the right technological adaptations and equipment, change is possible, while current developments and increasing acceptance mean that sooner or later processes like these will transform the principle of reuse into one – if not the – standard in raw materials acquisition. 

It is true that political and financial programmes develop the greatest force of change in this field – and not the great ideas that designers have. In the examples of football shirts, furniture or coffee capsules made of recycled materials given here, the products are substitutes that look just like the “ecologically incorrect” products, with the exception of a hardly noticeable or invisible composition of materials. In other words, the success of these products is based only on a political and moral idea, or an economic or regulatory framework. 

This is very different in the case of products that rework used and worn relatively cheap objects from everyday life “as found” materials. These products do not return recycled objects by means of technical processes to their original material form so as to make another entirely “new” product. Instead they leave the found materials more or less as found – in their final and specific material and formal composition as a product. Even if this strategy does not perfectly match the definition of the German Waste Management Act5, or, put another way, does not correspond to our understanding of the recycling process, this form of reuse is nonetheless a very attractive alternative to the industrial “procurement of secondary materials” – at least from the perspective of design. 

It is the aim of the exhibition Pure Gold to show this. It presents a total of 76 examples by 53 designers from the regions of Europe, Latin America, North Africa and the Near East, East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, and Southeast Asia, who have one clear thing in common. With varying degrees of perfection, all of these works are made either entirely by hand or with the help of just the simplest tools from used and worn materials – trash or the cheapest materials around. This means that expenditure on both equipment and operations is low. Works like those shown here can be made in the smallest workshops, within industrially more or less under-developed structures or independently at a private workbench. 

To summarize: reuse here is much less “fundamental” and thus much less complex. The added value of the used materials is only partially due to the purely material qualities of the original material. It is also due to the use of the physical, compositional, configured or just the aesthetic features of a deliberately selected or randomly found product. While industrial recycling aims to generate a quantity of products that are all as identical as possible (this is the only way to make a product like the Bayern football shirt), these “as found” strategies are primarily interested in using very specific known or hitherto neglected qualities such as formability, colour, firmness, haptics, or material structure and to add nuances in a new context. Sometimes this goes so far as to show the materials demonstratively while their original context and actual function can only be ascertained with a good deal of detective work. Probably no one would notice that Waltraud Münzhuber’s containers are nothing more than woven videotapes of various “favourite films.” And it would probably be just as difficult to see in Paul Cocksedge’s Styrene lamp a geometrically precise and yet relatively simple compilation of heat-reshaped polystyrene coffee cups. The origin of the Free Range stools by El Ultimo Grito is also not recognizable at first sight; these dented items are cleverly reshaped and compressed cardboard boxes. 

Above all, it is the diversity of the found materials that makes this source of materials into a realistic alternative to the energy intensive reuse of standard raw materials. Found materials can be papers of all kinds, corrugated card, glass, car tyres, cork, denim, builders’ wood, plastic baskets, wooden planks, wool, fridge coatings, plastic bags, flip-flops, sticky and PVC tape, steel offcuts, cheap bags, and much more. If we add the characteristic attributes to this list of materials – it is after all the physical and aesthetic features that speak for and against the use of a material – then we can get a rough idea of the immense imaginative scope that this nearly inexhaustible stock of alleged trash holds for contemporary and future design. 

Of course this form of design and production is not really new. It has similarities with the principle of the ready-made in the fine arts and with the adhocism propagated by Charles Jencks in the early 1970s6, or with various aspects of the DIY movements from the 1960s to today, or the drop-out practices of the hippies in the 1960s and 1970s. 

We can also recall here how articles of daily use are improvised in times of scarcity, originating from a completely different situation, but made and used with the same impulse and design principles as the works shown in this exhibition.7 

In contrast to these “movements,” however (perhaps with the exception of objects of use made out of need and necessity), today’s development in design-motivated recycling (or recycling-motivated design) on show in this exhibition has no missionary urgency and comes with no abstract and idealistic ideology. Instead, these works derive from a mix of curiosity and imagination, an analytical perspective and often incredible patience, combined with crafts skills and a solid knowledge of the “raw materials” used. It is probably exactly this combination of very sober skill and artistic talent that has enabled this phenomenon in design to spread all around the world. This also means that these manually made and “improvised” works are no less significant than technologies developed for mass production and serial recycling. 

For sure, in view of the 320,000 paper coffee cups discarded per hour (!) in Germany alone8, the importance of industrially managed recycling cannot be overemphasized. This is also true of the fact that manual production can simply and easily be carried out with the simplest of tools, and can lead to outstanding results, as this exhibition shows. The quality is not just in the design, but with the right handicrafts, also monetary. 

The designer Stuart Haygarth holds an undisputed top place in this respect.9 The Drop chandelier he designed in 2007 is made of hundreds of different carefully cleaned plastic bottle bases rearranged in a form resembling drops of water as the product’s key design idea. The production and material both show that this product could be made anywhere in the world, only if enough plastic bottles are available – but these are washed up on our shores everywhere. 

The only reason why this classic example of exceptional upcycling cannot be included in this exhibition is its price of several thousand pounds sterling. This shows that we are not all that far away from the value of gold that the title of this exhibition suggests, particularly when we take a closer look at all the trash around us.

2 See Neue Zürcher Zeitung, international edition, 22 February 2017, pp. 38/39.

3 See Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 March 2017, p. 19.

4 See Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 19 March 2017, p. 24.

5 “Recycling“ is defined as “any process of use that processes waste products into products or materials to be used either for their original purpose or for other purposes. This includes the use and processing of organic materials that are to be used as fuel or for back-filling” (§ 3 subsection 25, German Waste Management Act).

6 Charles Jencks, Nathan Silver, Adhocism, New York, 1973.

7 See Werkbund-Archiv, Blasse Dinge, Werkbund und Waren 1945 – 1949. Eine Ausstellung des Werkbund-Archivs im Martin-Gropius-Bau vom 12.8. – 8.10.1989, exhibition magazine, Berlin, no year.

8 The number 320,000 is taken from Barbara Kuchler, “Über die Verhältnisse der anderen Leben,” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 26 November 2016.

9 Stuart Haygarth, www.stuarthaygarth.com/

Upcycling in Latin America: A Long Tradition

Reusing cheap materials or garbage to create new objects and extending their life cycle has been part of Latin American material culture for a long time. Whereas in parts of the world like Europe this practice derives from environmental awareness, in these countries it derives from an inventiveness dictated by a need for survival. Poverty historically created vast population clusters marginalized from consumer society. Lack of access to industrially manufactured goods prompted people to use their own hands to create and make objects aimed at satisfying their everyday needs.

In Brazil, up to the 1970s, the population was predominantly rural. Creating objects for family or community use was based on natural local elements as raw materials. Straw would become baskets to carry supplies, woven hammocks to sleep in or the roofs of homes; clay would be transformed into vessels to store water and into plates to eat from; tree branches and trunks combined with leather from animals would result in items of furniture. In the country dubbed as the one with the greatest biodiversity in the world, there is no shortage of raw materials to supply the different requirements of resistance, lightness, durability, and adaptability to the local climate in various typologies of objects.

With growing urbanization, materials derived from industrial society’s leftovers were added to naturally available materials. The garbage of the wealthiest became raw materials for the population brackets at the base of the pyramid. Thus, reusing leftovers, as “infected” as they might seem, became an everyday practice. Another frequent attitude was to dislocate objects from the functions they were primarily made to serve and adapt them to new functions.

The Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi (1914–1992), who came to Brazil in the 1940s and stayed until the end of her days, admiringly documented these practices, which she came to know in the late 1950s when she started to work in Bahia state, in the northeastern region of the country, poorer than industrialized São Paulo, where she had been living up to then. Lina fell in love with quilts made from small fabric scraps and with utensils created through reusing various aluminium packaging. Paradigmatic objects she collected during her wanderings were kerosene lamps used to light homes with no electric power supply, made of garbage – ironically, some of them used discarded burnt-out bulbs as the container for the combustible fluid.

Another intellectual who was deeply interested in such practices was designer Aloísio Magalhães (1927–1982). In the 1970s, he created the Centro Nacional de Referência Cultural (National Centre of Cultural Reference), which documented local efforts. Aloísio was motivated by a question from the then Brazilian minister of Industry and Commerce Severo Gomes, who asked why Brazilian products did not have their own character. According to the designer, this was due to unfamiliarity with Brazilian material culture. As head of the Centre, Aloísio conducted research on textiles, ceramics production, beverage labels, budget brands, indigenous crafts, and the recycling of industrial leftovers, among other themes, all carried out in order to explore the character of Brazilian products and designs.

The Centre was a public institution trying to question the function-oriented quality dominating institutionalized Brazilian design at the time, which was due to the great influence of the German Ulm School of Design model on the first design school established in Brazil – Escola Superior de Desenho Industrial (ESDI; Higher Education School of Industrial Design), founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1963. ESDI’s programme followed that of the Ulm School, from where some of the professors came. Adoption of this international style had become a prevailing power not only at ESDI, but also at schools opened later and in the everyday activities of designers.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, echoes of concerns regarding “recycling in design” started to reach Brazil, coming particularly from Europe, along with environmental initiatives against exaggerated consumerism and a sense of anxiety about having more and more stuff based on a Western way of life. Expressions such as “Kleenex culture” came to critically represent this mentality, as did “use and discard”. Those movements started to question the very use of the expression “to discard”. After all, what is really discarded? If it is no longer at home, it is still part of the town, of the country – and ultimately – of the world. Cargo ships transport compacted waste from highly industrialized countries to far-away places in the southern hemisphere, trying to “discard” their filth. However, this will continue to be “within” the planet. We needed to start to look at waste as the only resource growing on the planet, as the American thinker Buckminster Fuller foretold.

Those international echoes came to Latin America, ironically at a time when many countries in the region – Brazil included – were going through great economic booms, weakening the population‘s recycling efforts. Thus, through international environmental movements fuelled by a growing environmental crisis, reuse initiatives gained new meaning – now as positioning statements, and almost like an ideological manifesto for the planet’s future.

The ideas of some branches of design in the northern hemisphere also influenced Latin America, expressed, for instance, in the Conscious, Simple – Consciously Simple exhibition curated by Volker Albus and completed in 1998 by ifa, which later, in May 1999, came to Museu da Casa Brasileira in São Paulo. Albus showed an alternative culture of products conceived, produced and handled in a consciously simple way, which represented a shock to Brazilian ears used to the Ulm School’s industrial pragmatism.¹

In November of the same year, at the Novos alquimistas (New Alchemists) exhibition at Itaú Cultural, I gathered objects resulting from cheap materials or garbage upcycling. In the same exhibition space, vernacular creations by people with no formal instruction from around the country stood side by side with the work of educated designers who sought inspiration both in Brazilian traditional culture and in new ideas emerging from discussions in the northern hemisphere. Many designers taking part in the show referred to their grandparents as “recycling masters”, people capable of reusing everything, of transforming waste into gold.

As I noted in the catalogue, “recycling, reusing, recontextualizing became part of our everyday lives, and not only in the realm of objects. Graphic design changed with image scanning and distortion made possible through a computer. In fashion, from the grunge movement as inspiration, also to haute couture, it came to the streets. Samplers are very present in the universe of pop, and other music movements take advantage of reusing elements of traditional local culture and of other worlds. The dictatorship of ‘good taste’ no longer exists, in any domain. Recirculation of information, forms, and sound marks our everyday lives. In the field of objects, it does not matter what the nuances of each different country are, there is a common questioning of the type of progress adopted by industrial society.”²

Latin American designers now selected for Pure Gold reveal their dual influence of internal vernacular design and of social movements influencing international design. Brunno Jahara and Domingos Tótora from Brazil and Colectivo Ático de Diseño from Argentina are relatively new protagonists on the scene, and even though they share similar views regarding design today, each of them chooses different procedures.

Domingos Tótora starts by designing his raw materials himself, developed from discarded cardboard packaging. This is not simple reuse, as a whole new process is involved in the transformation of the material. Cardboard is mixed with water and glue, and then pressed and moulded, acquiring resistance. Only later will it gain the forms imagined by the designer.

The path of Brunno Jahara is the recontextualization of very cheap pieces in plastic or clay, industrially manufactured in large series. In that process of dislocation and regrouping, he generates new uses and, particularly, new meanings. These are ready-made objects.

Curator Luján Cambariere, on the other hand, in her Colectivo Ático de Diseño, starts with antiquities and invites designers to recreate the pieces, inserting them into new repertoires.

None of these three designers hide the genesis of their objects, but they do not make them overly evident either. Their objects do not intend to be manifestoes or statements; they are not loud. All of them display great ability to transform their environment through economical methods and resources. Further, they display inventiveness and an ability to offer solutions, even when they are far from ideal conditions and far from technological sophistication. Form transcends function so that it can incorporate different functionalities. Jahara and Ático de Diseño manage resources like humour and irony well, while Tótora chooses very clear silent poetry.

All these objects invite us, as consumers, to combine consumption and community living with the pleasure of aesthetic joy and a desire for a better world.

Adélia Borges
Curator | Latin American Region | São Paulo, Brazil.

1 Conscious, Simple – Consciously Simple. The Emergence of an Alternative Product Culture, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa), Stuttgart 1998.

2 “Novos alquimistas,” in Consumo Cotidiano/Arte, São Paulo, Itaú Cultural, 1999.

The Goethe-Institut is the international cultural institute of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since its founding in Germany in 1951, its mission has been to foster cultural exchange, education, and social discourse in the international context, as well as to support the teaching and learning of the German language in dialogue with the world, promoting diversity, understanding, and trust, encouraging access to the German language, and supporting the free development of culture and science. The institution believes in the potential of international cultural exchange, nurtured and strengthened by connections between artists, activists, academic thinkers, researchers, creative minds, and institutional partnerships. In this context, the Goethe-Institut reaffirms its commitment to the UN 2030 Agenda action plans, promoting the 17 Sustainable Development Goals through cultural, educational, and environmental initiatives that encourage equity, diversity, and global sustainability.

Around 20,000 cultural events take place worldwide each year in cooperation with partners. Through residency programs, collaborations, and co-productions, the institute fosters the creation of global networks among cultural professionals.

Today, the Goethe-Institut São Paulo develops and supports a broad spectrum of cultural events, disseminating and updating local themes present in the contemporary German scene, in addition to mapping the most pressing issues in Brazil through its projects.

"PURE GOLD – UPCYCLED! UPGRADED!" is an exhibition by the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. (ifa) in cooperation with the Oscar Niemeyer Museum and the Goethe-Institut São Paulo.

Upcycling is the practice that best represents the alliance of contemporary design with a growing ecological awareness. Unlike traditional recycling, upcycling transforms discarded or unused materials into products of greater value, both functionally and aesthetically. It is a creative way to give new life to objects that would otherwise be considered trash, promoting conscious consumption, originality, and environmental responsibility. In the world of design, upcycling not only reduces environmental impact but also inspires unique solutions with their own stories and identity. Previously discarded materials take on new forms, bearing the marks of time and their own narrative. This practice allows the designer-creator to explore contrasts, textures, and unique symbolism, transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary. The result is signature pieces, full of personality, that break with conventional aesthetic standards and provoke reflection on consumption, disposal, memory, and meaning.

We hope the exhibition inspires new ways of making, combined with a concern for environmental impact.

“The selected items from the Oscar Niemeyer Museum’s collection are rooted in a more or less traditional design philosophy.

That is precisely why they were placed in dialogue with the collection of upcycled furniture pieces.

By presenting the two design approaches side by side, visitors can perceive that there is no significant formal or stylistic difference between using conventional materials — such as wood, plastic, or leather — and working with ‘used’ or recycled materials.

The exhibition "PURE GOLD – UPCYCLED! UPGRADED!" is a thought-provoking collection of works that unites 53 designers from various countries in a shared universal reflection: humanity's relationship with nature. A total of 76 works are presented in Room 2 of the MON. It is an exhibition by ifa - Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. in cooperation with the Oscar Niemeyer Museum and the Goethe-Institut São Paulo. The concept and conception were conceived by Volker Albus, a professor at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, Germany. The Latin American conceptualization was created by researcher and design historian Adélia Borges.

On view exhibition

Afghanistan

Cinema Dreams

Através

Pure Gold

Veemente

Africa

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