The Argentine artist Marcelo Brodsky he appeals to photography as a tool for the search for identity, capturing the effect of time and the events that occurred in his personal and social environment. Many will remember him for his work Class, in which synthesized, on a photograph taken in 1966, the destiny –after the last Argentine military dictatorship– of his 32 companions from the sixth division of freshmen at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, and was later acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MET) in New York, where it is exhibited as part of its stable collection.
Now, Brodsky –represented by the Buenos Aires gallery Rolf Art and that participates in the exhibition Biennalesur– comes from working four hands with the Peruvian Fernando Bryce: together they worked in the month of June in a residence in Miami to create Territoriesa work of complaint about “the violence of which Latin America is a victim”, and in which they portrayhe cases of 10 activists killed in nine countries on the continentfrom the historic former Sandinista guerrilla Hugo Torres, who was detained in Nicaragua when he died last February, to Berta Cáceres, murdered in 2016 for opposing the construction of a hydroelectric plant in Honduras.
There is also the Brazilian environmental activist Chico Mendes, murdered in 1988 by loggers and cattle ranchers, and the Brazilian activist murdered in 2018 Marielle Franco, “emblem of the resistance against (Brazilian President Jair) Bolsonaro”, in the words of the artist. There’s others.
Marcelo Brodsky Fernando Bryce. “In Latin America, we suffer the killing of people, the degradation of democracy. It’s like being torn to pieces,” they say. / Photo: courtesy
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For the moment, the piece remains in Space 23 in Miami, where it was made: “It will be framed and a wooden box will be built for its transport. We are talking with different museum institutions to decide where it will be exhibited first,” he explains to Clarin Culture. “It is a fundamental work for me, a turning point in my career, as it was Class 25 years ago.”
In their first joint work, Bryce y Brodsky they bet, then, on a composition of large dimensions (3 x 1.62 meters) in which They mix the art of denunciation and photojournalism.
On this occasion, the Argentine artist painted over photographs of wounds that the human being inflicts on the environmentfrom deforestation, from oil spills, mostly from the photojournalist Rodrigo Abd, while Bryce –currently exhibiting at the Reina Sofía Art Center and with works in collections around the world including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA)– focused on portraits of activists.
A fragment of the work “Territorios”, which denounces violence. / Photo: courtesy press
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And, together, they contributed their personal vision when adapting the painting The martyrdom of Saint Hippolytus, by the Flemish painter Dirk Bouts (1410/1420-1475), in which it is seen how four men on horseback dismember a man, an image that occupies the center of their work and that reflects, they pointed out, the current situation of attacks on activists and civil rights defenders in the region.
“In the case of Latin America, we suffer the slaughter of people, the degradation of democracy, it is like a breakdown. AceWe are at the destruction of nature, of our territory”, explains Brodsky from Miami.
If initially they wanted to deal with the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, they went on to deal with the “ecological, sexual, racial, nature problemsetc., that are going through the lives of all of us at this time,” they explained.
The Peruvian artist Fernando Bryce and the Argentine Marcelo Brodsky joined this June in a residence in Miami to create “Territorios”. / Photo: courtesy
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–Beyond the cases that the work documents, what potential do you think art has in the contemporary world when it comes to making visible the multiple violence we live with, especially in underdeveloped or developing countries?
–Art has had and has the potential to transform thought in all ages, from the cave to today’s time. We call this work art in real time :hWe have gone from working on history, on our past in a broad sense, from the beginning of the 20th century in the case of Fernando to the mobilizations of 1968 in the world in my case, and we decided to move to the present.
We had come to Miami with the idea of work on the war in Ukraine, but when we started conversing in those long chats sharing a creative workspace, we went back to paying. We want to talk about what happens at home, and what happens? Our ecosystem is being destroyed it is advancing on nature, the logic of endless accumulation destroys the planet.
“We want to talk about what is happening at home: our ecosystem is being destroyed, nature is being advanced, the logic of endless accumulation destroys the planet.”
–Marcelo Brodsky
Artist
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She explains: “We think then that although the struggle to face this logic is central, being an environmentalist, being a feminist, fighting for memory, for truth and for justice is not a walk, it is not about eating lettuce and that’s it. Defend the planet and everything else that we need to defend costs lives, the people who are on the front line of that defense, in the disputed territories, are killed. Just when we were discussing in residence how to talk about ecology in Latin America, we received the news of the assassination of Jesusita Moreno, an Afro-American social leader from the Chocó region on the Colombian Pacific coast.
At that time we decided that the best way to approach this issue was to combine the images of the destruction of the forest, illegal mining, oil spills and fires in the green with the portraits of those who have given their lives for defend those spaces and the rights associated with them. The rights of women, indigenous people, Afro-Americans, the marginalized of our America. Those who gave their lives for it. That is why we include Marisel Escobedo, of Ciudad Juarez, which faced the femicide of her daughter until she was murdered herself in the square of Chihuahua, Mexico.
Also to Hugh Torres, a commander of the Sandinista revolution imprisoned by the Ortega dictatorship until he died in jail in February of this year. We also include Marielle Franco, emblem of the resistance to Bolsonaro, assassinated in Rio de Janeiro by assassins related to the extreme right-wing power that devastates that country. To indigenist leaders, ecologists, to Jorge Julio Lopez, a full representative of the coherence of the witness and his mission. All these overlapping violences that we live are taken here and their victims are vindicated as an example, and as a price for fulfilling a commitment to the territories, nature and ideas.
What can art do for them?
–Value this commitment, rescuing them and indicating the costs of this coherence. We do it within the framework of the cultural circuit, with the mission of extending the discussion, opening questions, proposing a path.
–How did the idea come about and where did it start from?
–We drew the Tupac Amaru in a meter and a half with four hands and we put it in the center of the table, that is, in the center of the composition. From that moment we located the nature photographs, which we licensed to Rodrigo Abd, and we intervened with color and watercolor and the drawings of the social leaders. All on the basis of a permanent conversation about the fragmentation of the territory and the bodythe degradation of democracy, the destruction of the environment, the resistance, the assassinations.
The black and white of the ink portraits complemented well with the color of the intervened photos, enhancing each other. TAll decisions were made by mutual agreementthe design, the selection of images, the composition, the texts.
–”Artivism” seems to show that the intersection between art, current affairs and politics is becoming more and more frequent. What are the artists that inspire you? Do you recognize a trend in this regard?
–Actuality, art and politics have always been intertwined, but each artist tackles this intersection with their own priorities and instruments, with their own concepts and objectives. First of all, I am inspired by the artists with whom I dialogue, through the work or personally.
Every artist is in permanent conversation with those who preceded him. with the history of art: we visit museums, exhibitions, we participate in collective initiatives, and in this movement we get to know the artists present, the different periods, the action through art. Every work refers in some way to some previous work, to all previous works.
Specifically, the artists who inspired us to make Territories are those whose work was art of the present, art of your present, art in real time. We can mention Pablo Picasso, Francisco de Goya, for focusing on the cultural field of our language, and not pretending to cover a world of infinite references. Both worked transforming the experience of their life into art, and contributed with their work to better understand the world.
Token
- Territories is the fruit of his residency this June at El Espacio 23, Jorge M. Pérez’s contemporary art space in Miami.
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