17 Apr 2013

Contra Escambos opens in Belo Horizonte & Recife

Barter: trade in goods and services between two or more parties. This inaugural gesture of colonial relations implicated in the confrontation of world-systems unknown to each other, which were soon reinvented into parallels, coincidences and mixtures, thereby establishing an economy of exploitation and violence that involved all: whether stone, plant, animal or human.

Contra Escambos is a group show permeated by the symbolic power of things, their meanings and mutations of value that occur in acts of exchange. Works of artists and researchers from Brazil, Portugal, Chile, Peru, Argentina and Haiti are combined in an exhibition (a constructivist installation, inspired not only by the Russian type) that reflects on the act of bartering as a key element in the emergence of other modernisms, which were resulted from a dynamic of global colonialism. The notion of Contra Escambos is then proposed from a post-colonial perspective, in order to address the continuous impact of the dichotomy colonialism/modernism on flows of contemporary life, especially in Latin America. It presents a selection of strategies – both documentary and fictional – based on visual research, cultural narratives, artistic actions and the creation of transversal archives that seeks to activate critical perspectives on this dual aspect of the modern and the colonial. The project focuses on facets of historical narratives, colonial legacies and observations of urban transformation – combined with sociocultural and economic elements that take shape in crossbred and miscegenated environments.

Contra Escambos will take place in the cities of Belo Horizonte and Recife and unfold in several activities around aspects of each region, in order to draw connections between local contexts and the main theme of the project. The whole project is proposed as a way of dealing with cultural narratives, political vectors and economic matrices of our colonial-modern past that still persist and manifest itself in the present. And thus, support a local debate on (post)colonialism and the so-called multiculturalism, to explore the complexities of local knowledge in their constant movements, contamination, fictions, rumours and changes.

Participants: Beto Shwafaty, Leandro Nerefuh, María Berríos, Runo Lagomarsino, Paulo Tavares, Pedro Neves Marques, Sasha Huber, Gilda Mantilla and Raimond Chaves, Santiago Garcia Navarro, Pedro Marighella, Omnivoro.

* The expression 'Contra Escambos' means something like 'Counter Bartering'.

Contra Escambos is a project awarded by the Programa Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais – 9ª Edição, Ministério da Cultura, Governo Federal do Brasil.