Tangolomango is a children's game and nursery rhyme which is part of the Brazilian imagination. It evokes an unpredictable and sometimes tragic event, as if an invisible force interfered with the natural course of things. At the same time, it constitutes a magical element capable of moving us between the fantastic and the real, teaching us about the inevitability of loss and the uncertainty of the future. The word Tangolomango originates from the Kimbundu, Kikongo and Umbundu languages, now referred to as Bantu languages, reminding us of how much mystery, storytelling and learning live in the playful universe perpetuated by oral tradition.

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In Rivane Neuenschwander's work, the complexity of history is treated with the same precision as the subtleties of our everyday experiences. There is no individual action that is not connected to a collective body, just as every social process has a subjective impact on each one of us. In Tangolomango, the artist draws on childhood memories to address the Brazilian military dictatorship, whose coup occurred 60 years ago and still has repercussions today, either as memory or re-enactment. With a nonlinear and often cyclical view of time, political aspects are also manifested in the understanding of nature, through a debate that discusses our ways of life, in a relationship that brings the human species closer to non-human species.

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⁠With a broad interest in interspecies behaviors and the philosophies of everyday life, Rivane Neuenschwander's artistic production is manifested on many fronts. Tangolomango brings together a series of works by the artist in several languages— paintings, sculptures, installations, drawings and films that were produced from the 2000s to the present day, where the presence of the enigma goes back and forth, oscillating between the children's game and the political game. Central issues in the works gathered here include historical erasures and gaps, territorial and geopolitical disputes, migratory processes and power dynamics.

 

 

Júlia Rebouças, Douglas de Freitas and Beatriz Lemos

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