Lines, calligraphic gestures, knot of wool, dry roots taken as maps. After Reinaldo Botelho's invitation to the solo show, these were the elements that reconnected me to curator Márcio Harum, who was already familiar with my work process, my recent research and action. Márcio agreed to explore the intricacies of water and soil, and thinkers of the Chthulucene and narratives of anticipation. He particularly focused his gaze on the sculptural piece of paper Olísipo: “(...) like a master nautical chart it resembles an intriguing logbook (. ..) of a trip that only Renata can tell us about.”
“TENTACULAR is the name of both his artistic research and his incessant search and way of operating. It represents the place where the horizons of land (roots), water (sea) and air (sky) meet in one direction/doom. Without temporal definition, the fossilized idea of a future is its recycling of concepts, practices and materials. In the exhibition we are faced with the rearrangement of noise and the pause for observation. The sensoriality of silence is below the ground and at the bottom of the sea. The artist’s body appears anchored, sometimes on land, sometimes loose in the intersecting space of the sea, which goes from the coast to the high seas.”
Curatorship
TENTACULAR is an action environment in which Renata Pelegrini revisits expressions of her work and welcomes them in her current artistic journey. Through the flow of connections, what is perceived is the timeless encounter of research that the artist intertwines in her practice. The research RADIX holds the ancestry of the cohabitants of land and sea, while SENTIENT presents the porous world of the feminine. MAPPA reveals the search for direction where the body was oriented; and yet, STRATA accentuate the horizon and transposition. Finally, ATTACCATI intends care and bonds between humans and more-than-humans.
The solo show at Casa do Olhar Luiz Sacilotto took place from May to July 2023. It brought together works from 2008 until then. The space, which is a cultural heritage site, hosted a set of artworks strongly linked to ancestry and intertwined, together the artistic repertoire selected for the exhibition, with desires for preservation, awareness and care. This combination of purposes strengthened the idea of knowledge and practices researched on my journey. Ancestors who wove and circulated in nature, especially near water, are remembered in ceramic and root sculptures.
The exhibition created a space for exchanges and sharing like no other. ‘Not-knowing’ was a propeller of paths in multiple directions of my investigative action. In my weekly meetings with the public, personal narratives about the presence of that historic place in the visitor’s life, about the provocations of the display and furniture in the show, or about how TENTACULAR took the public back to different times of memory and action, wouldn’t happen otherwise.
"Presented for the first time, ATTACCATTI is a series from the time of the pandemic closure. Each piece in the series is a group of paper pages held together by pharmaceutical bandages, revealing touch as a mark of attention to others and nature."
Exhibit
Conversation
Artist's book
The pages that make up the TENTACULAR publication are next to each other until the person holding them finds other affinities between the images and changes the initial sequence that was presented. In the freedom to manipulate the loose pages rests my desire for mixing, for welcoming coexistence and for believing in the potential for care contained in each hand. This artist's book also wants to be the book of an active being in its tentacular character.
poem
“leaving as is”
in TENTACULAR book
holding with your hands,
take care that knowledge is intertwined,
let the senses harmonize with the breathing of the body and the planet,
hear from the dark, from the bottom of the sea, from the stars, from memory,
and perceive yourself as a root in the wind,
tentacular