Museums

It’s Saturday the 26th at 6AM. I slept pretty well thanks to the cachaca.
It is Museum day and I got my recommendations from Renata who is a student of design.
I will start with MAM. The exhibit is called Seu Sami [Mr. Sami] and the artist is Hilal Sami Hilal born of Syrian heritage. Christian and Islamic elements intermingle in themes of writing, music and psychoanalysis. In the main hall there were 3 pieces. The first was a suspended cube made up of panels of squares separated by a distance equal to the width of an individual square. There is a labyrinth made up of large bound volumes with the pages extended and bound into another book. Each book has half the pages going in one binding and half going into another. Each attached binding has half of its pages bound into another book. All the books are on end and by the way they are positioned create a pathway inviting the viewer on a short journey. There is a platform containing hundreds of smaller pieces that he refers to as a library. Much of the work is in the form of books and pages made of fabric, handmade paper, foil, thread and other materials. Many of these pieces contain elements that make up the last and truly wonderful tribute to his father. In a large dark room with wall-to-wall mirrors at both ends there are four “hangings” not unlike the panels in the first piece but much larger. They hang from the ceiling a little away from the wall to play some with shadows, and then they flow onto the floor for about four feet. The mirrors make them look twice as large and you don’t know there are mirrors until you get up next to them. These grids are covered with thread and wads of handmade paper in a calligraphic manner that suggests something different in each of the four. The second on is virtually Rococo with ornate swirls, curlicues, palmettes and the like. It also shows the color variation even though they are all very monochromatic. The last one is disturbing. As you turn to it you lose the sense of calligraphy and see instead a visual cacophony of barbed wire, amplified by the shadows.
My next stop was the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, for the exhibit called Ostropicos: Visoes a Partit do Centro do Globo. The exhibit includes about 130 works from Berlin’s Museum of Ethnology and works from contemporary artists from South Africa, Germany, Singapore, Spain, Ethiopia, England, Peru, Switzerland and Brazil. The use of thematic groups was freely and associatively guided by Claude Levi-Straus’s Mythologiques series. The fabrics on exhibit were the most beautiful I have ever seen. The micro-weaving and delicate embroidery were breathtaking. I know I’m gushing but I love fabric.
My last stop was Casa Franca-Brasil, which was showing an extraordinary collection of the works of Jean Baptiste Debret, an 18th Century French Artist, Botanist, Anthropologist and all around culture maven. He must have spent a lot of time here, as his work is extensive. Etchings, watercolors, botanical drawings, oils of historical import, and portraiture document the birth of this amazing country. Check him out on the net.
I am back to my room and am going to sleep for a while as this cold has me exhausted. I did discover the joys of the soft serve cone from Hamburger Bob’s down the street. Oh sweet relief!