HOMO SAPIENS SAPIENS - Pipilotti Rist
Photos: Ícaro Moreno
Since the 1980s, Pipilotti Rist has stood out for her pioneering use of video and its recording, reproduction and projection mediums, building an artistic language of her own that has become a major reference for different dimensions of contemporary culture. The artist is interested in the singularities of sight and the video apparatus as an extension of this bodily sense, yet capable of reaching angles and scales impossible to the eye. In contrast, she questions what we see when we close our eyes, what fantasies are constructed, and how the conscious and unconscious contribute to the consolidation of an imagined reality— independent from but not contradictory to the lived reality. Her works result in sensory experiences that create immersive atmospheres, transcending simple visual contemplation.
Filmed in 2004 in the gardens of Inhotim, before the institution opened to the public, the video installation Homo sapiens sapiens (2005), is now being shown for the first time in Brumadinho, celebrating twenty years of its production. For this occasion, the artist developed a specific installation project for Galeria Fonte, where elements such as curtains, rugs, beds and cushions create an immersive and multisensory environment that simultaneously shifts, shuffles and overlaps the experiences of video, light, sound, space, and the spectator.
To make a transition between the outdoor and indoor spaces, the gallery entrance hosts the installation Seelenlichter (Soul Lights), produced by the artist in 2021. Adapted for the façade of the gallery, the work turns the Inhotim gardens into a dreamlike panorama.
Rist questions the separation between body and nature and proposes their integration, understanding human beings as "rootless plants," or plants that can move and interact with the surrounding environment. Feminist engagement also runs through her works, expressed through the celebration of the female body, fantasy and freedom of choice driven by desire. For Rist the female body is the archetype of all Homo sapiens including males. These bodies continuously appear in her works to question social norms, proposing alternative ways of existing in the world. Accordingly, the artist questions the role of the individual in relation to the universe, exploring the connection between the body and the cosmos both critically and poetically.
Douglas de Freitas and Lucas Menezes