Galería MUY is pleased to invite the public to explore the exhibition of diverse works by Brazilian artist Caetano Dias, curated by Luciana Accioly. This exhibition includes the performance “Sweet Memories” by Saúl Kak. It marks the beginning of a dialogue between these two artists on the themes of exploitation, racism, and the relationship to land, particularly the agricultural product of sugar. Below is the curatorial note for this impactful exhibition.

When I first saw a set of images produced by the Brazilian visual artist Caetano Dias over the past three years, I was convinced that artists can truly see beyond what we do. Sometimes, they predict the impossible, or foresee possible futures—sometimes catastrophic ones. When Dias began this series of performative actions and artistic interventions addressing traumatic episodes in Brazilian history, the far-right had not yet come to power in Brazil. Yet, we could already sense that something terrible was unfolding in the country’s political landscape, even though we didn’t want to believe the worst was on the horizon. The artist may have already known this when he created these images made from pure anguish, as current as the “no future” of a nation that now finds itself slogging through the mud, in front of the horrified vision of its worst self. The many discourses about supposed reconciled “Brazilian-ness” are no longer enough to contain the force of the reality that bursts forth, leaving a dense, almost suffocating trace in the air. With his body covered by a shapeless substance, the result of the traumas that accumulate in the very impossibility of narrating our history, Caetano Dias screams in his own way: “Enough!”

Paraphrasing David Lapoujade, today the Brazilian can no longer stand it. It is urgent to look back, as the prophetic artist does, who, in a gesture of life and agony, unearths the remnants of other times. Lying on the desolate surface of our own resentful and dying bodies is the testimony that the conjunction of colonization, racism, and slavery in Brazil was, without a doubt, one of the most violent and cruel in Latin America. Therefore, it is from the remnants of our history that Caetano Dias invites us to create a memory of what we are not, where the inhuman in us screams for habitable futures.

Luciana Accioly
Curator
June 2019