Juliana Caffé, born in São Paulo, in an honours in curatorship student at the Centre for Curating the archive here in Cape Town. How to Remain Silent? will run from the 24th of October to the 11th of November at A4 Arts Foundation, 23 Buitenkant Street, District Six, Cape Town. There will be an open screening and conversation with Amílcar Patel and Daniel Lima on Tuesday the 31st of October at 5pm. Please download the invitation. For more information email jucaffe@gmail.com or info@a4arts.org

How to Remain Silent?

Curated by Juliana Caffé

How to remain silent? is the rhetorical question that remains whenever one considers discussing Brazil today. How can one ignore the successive political, ethical, economic and cultural scandals on the news each day? How can one not be bothered by the fact that chaos has become the new normal? Comprising videos and one publication, the exhibition features work by contemporary Brazilian artists who have somehow engaged this question and used their art to protest, question or encourage new ways of existing and living in society. Whereas the publication addresses the political, social and artistic events of the last five years and works its way up from the June 2013 demonstrations, the curated videos cover a longer time frame and address questions that are pressing in Brazilian society.

The video programme and the publication are divided into five sections. In We Are Zumbi, collective Frente 3 de Fevereiro, Luiz de Abreu and Jonathas de Andrade explore race and class issues and prejudice in Brazilian society. In Minorities and Gentrification, Ailton Krenak, Raphael Escobar and Virginia de Medeiros discuss rights violations and state-sponsored violence against minorities and the low-income population. In Narratives of Power, Clara Ianni, Jaime Lauriano and Roberto Winter denounce the role of the media and historical narrative in the power play. In City, Gian Spina subverts representations of memory in the public space; Graziela Kunsch invokes the right to the city through the struggle of the secundarista students movement, as a right to redo the world we live in; and Lia Chaia works with her own body to investigate urban space in the megalopolis of São Paulo. Lastly, in Outcome, the work of Berna Reale sarcastically metaphorizes the tragedy of Brazilian politics; Rodrigo Braga enacts the angst of the scream that won’t be stifled; and a video by Renata de Bonis prompts reflection on the time of the world and what separates Brazil and Africa; what is it after all that makes us alike, what is it that draws us closer? In the publication, texts by Julián Fuks, Paulo Fehlauer and Peter Pal Pelbart ponder a few of the questions tackled in the exhibit; and essays by Sato do Brasil and Traplev and a manifesto by Daniel Lima amplify the historical reflection that the research suggests.