22 Apr 2010

'A cidade do homem nu' at Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo

In 1930, Brazilian multidisciplinary artist and cultural agitator Flavio de Carvalho (1899-1973), introduced a master plan for a new city to be built in the tropics. His proposal, �?A cidade do homem nu’ (�?The Nude Man’s City’), idealized a metropolis for what ought to be the man of the future: a man without god, without property and without marriage. A nude mankind that had stripped itself from its cultural constructs - or in de Carvalho’s words, "without scholastic taboos, free for reasoning and thinking". Within this new city, a Laboratory of erotica was to be constructed as a place against all socio-cultural fixations to the individual’s desires: “the nude man would select for itself its own forms of erótica, where no restriction whatsoever will enforce this or that sacrifice […] where it will project its loosen energy without repression, where it will realize its desires, discover new desires” (de Carvalho, 1930).

Bringing together artworks by contemporary international artists, archives and other cultural artifacts engaged within acts and forms of self representation and civil disobedience, the exhibition A cidade do homem nu seeks to instigate the radical and countercultural significance of de Carvalho's early century thinking found in his transgressive formulation to construct such a new urban landscape. With works by Claudia Andujar, Egle Budvytyte, Flavio de Carvalho, Cristina Lucas, Daria Martin, Santiago Monge and Miguel Angel Rojas. Also featuring visual material from Brazilian rock singer Ney Matogrosso and a documentary by Tatiana Issa and Raphael Alvarez on the 1970's tropical-queer theatre group Dzi Croquettes. Curated by Inti Guerrero.

A bilingual publication including a curatorial essay and archive texts written by Flavio de Carvalho in the 1930's is being released at the exhibition.

For more information and images of the works, please visit: www.acidadedohomemnu.blogspot.com

With the generous support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Bradesco, Gerdau, Itau, Santander and Fundacion Telefónica