Death through Suture – Eduarda de Souza
In an inexplicable and continuously violent world where men make history through wars and count them as statistics, Rosana Palazyan has been showing us, for almost two decades, that “God lives in the details.” No statistics for her, deaths are as they should be; a loss or a salvation of a human soul. Praise for this meticulous, disciplined, laborious, demanding and courageous artist, who, like her contemporary Leonilson, has been embroidering mainly to produce a cure.
Rosana attended the School of Visual Arts of Park Lage, the most prominent one in Rio de Janeiro at the time. This was the early 90s and the epoch where the “80s Generation,” which included artists such as Beatriz Milhazes, Adriana Varejão, Daniel Senise, Leda Catunda and Luiz Zerbini, were still being nurtured by the success of their large-scale paintings, a format which, consequently, still reigned at the time. “Painting was a sacrifice for me,” Rosana has famously declared.
The complex duty of being alive brought her the answer: an exhibition which the artist attended in her own school with works of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, a Brazilian artist who has been inserted in an exclusive context due to his mental sanity and which, for some, overcame the prejudice which marks the boundary between insanity and art. “If he can do it, why can’t I?” questioned Rosana.
Like Rosário, the artist began reintegrating her universe and that of others through embroidery and, most unforgettably, through the use of memory. Enveloped by family history and religion, what is most remarkable is how Rosana, who exercises her creativity not only through embroidery (which she began working with in the turn of the 20th century), but with photography, writing, drawings, installations and public art, maintains her identity by exposing so much of herself. Another of her major concerns is the area in which she exhibits her works.
If distance means subtlety and kindness, as philosophy masters such as Deleuze have defined it through the decades, then nothing is more apt to describe Rosana’s work than Leonilson’s piece. One can label Rosana’s work as provincial but, like Brazilian artist Marepe, she presents her beloved city, Rio de Janeiro, to the world, conquering complicity and value, succeeding with her “poetic violence.” Amongst her many assets lies her capacity to deal thematically and technically with the subject matter of childhood, adding color to her drawings and embroideries with blood, acrylic paint, aquarelles, different colored threads or other unusual materials from which she extracts colour, such as the natural pigments of flowers.
Today the artist returns to São Paulo after a major retrospective presented at CCBB (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil) and her participation in the 26th São Paulo Biennial with a solo exhibit at Galeria Leme, which represents her art. The show displays her delicate pieces in juxtaposition with the monumental architecture of Leme, erected by the renowned Paulo Mendes da Rocha. As always, a dialogue is created between her art pieces and the architectural space they inhabit. The show brings the experimental field of art into an encounter with the Other as allied with the natures of personal interchanges and transformations.
Rosana will create a site-specific work at Leme where, besides experimenting with sound and audience interaction, she will re-encounter embroidery in her artistic production. Since Palazyan has not worked with this medium for the last five years, it will now be presented in a less explicit form, revealing a new form of subtlety in her art.
Rosana attended the School of Visual Arts of Park Lage, the most prominent one in Rio de Janeiro at the time. This was the early 90s and the epoch where the “80s Generation,” which included artists such as Beatriz Milhazes, Adriana Varejão, Daniel Senise, Leda Catunda and Luiz Zerbini, were still being nurtured by the success of their large-scale paintings, a format which, consequently, still reigned at the time. “Painting was a sacrifice for me,” Rosana has famously declared.
The complex duty of being alive brought her the answer: an exhibition which the artist attended in her own school with works of Arthur Bispo do Rosário, a Brazilian artist who has been inserted in an exclusive context due to his mental sanity and which, for some, overcame the prejudice which marks the boundary between insanity and art. “If he can do it, why can’t I?” questioned Rosana.
Like Rosário, the artist began reintegrating her universe and that of others through embroidery and, most unforgettably, through the use of memory. Enveloped by family history and religion, what is most remarkable is how Rosana, who exercises her creativity not only through embroidery (which she began working with in the turn of the 20th century), but with photography, writing, drawings, installations and public art, maintains her identity by exposing so much of herself. Another of her major concerns is the area in which she exhibits her works.
If distance means subtlety and kindness, as philosophy masters such as Deleuze have defined it through the decades, then nothing is more apt to describe Rosana’s work than Leonilson’s piece. One can label Rosana’s work as provincial but, like Brazilian artist Marepe, she presents her beloved city, Rio de Janeiro, to the world, conquering complicity and value, succeeding with her “poetic violence.” Amongst her many assets lies her capacity to deal thematically and technically with the subject matter of childhood, adding color to her drawings and embroideries with blood, acrylic paint, aquarelles, different colored threads or other unusual materials from which she extracts colour, such as the natural pigments of flowers.
Today the artist returns to São Paulo after a major retrospective presented at CCBB (Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil) and her participation in the 26th São Paulo Biennial with a solo exhibit at Galeria Leme, which represents her art. The show displays her delicate pieces in juxtaposition with the monumental architecture of Leme, erected by the renowned Paulo Mendes da Rocha. As always, a dialogue is created between her art pieces and the architectural space they inhabit. The show brings the experimental field of art into an encounter with the Other as allied with the natures of personal interchanges and transformations.
Rosana will create a site-specific work at Leme where, besides experimenting with sound and audience interaction, she will re-encounter embroidery in her artistic production. Since Palazyan has not worked with this medium for the last five years, it will now be presented in a less explicit form, revealing a new form of subtlety in her art.
http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/?p=3804
