Elas – As virgens em cardumes – Grassa Crua with the women of the Colonia Juliana Moreira, Polo, 2016. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães with engraving of André Gustavo from the Cordel Arthur Bishop of Rosario de Chiquinho do Além Mar.
Gas Women
Fernanda Magalhães
Editors’ Note:. This essay unites poetic reflections, memories and inquiries by the artist Fernanda Magalhães drawing on two moments of contact with the mental health complex known as the Colônia Juliano Moreira [Juliano Moreira Colony]: with the women of the intern wards known as Nucleus Franco da Rocha and Nucleus Teixeira Brandão during her artist residency in 2016 on the occasion of the exhibition Das virgens em cardumes e da cor das auras [On Virgin Shoals and the Color of Auras] at the Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art and a year later, on her return as part of the international encounter Care as Method.
I was pure gases, air, empty space, time
I was air, empty space, time
And pure gasesStela do Patrocínio1
The women, their easy and suspicious smiles, with their drools and tongues out, their defenses, deliveries, attacks, and at times naked bodies swiftly moving through corridors, gardens and courtyards. The medicines make them drool and hungry. They dispute attention, spaces, rages, fears, dances, laughter, pains, afflictions. They talk, some scream sharply, they cry, they grumble, murmur, whisper. Others laugh, laughter with different tones.
Fig 1. Elas – Lambes. Núcleo Teixeira Brandão, 2016. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães
The therapist says in the video that, until he saw the photos we shot of the mental health patients during the activities of the residence, taken during the catwalk fashion parades and stops for posing for photographs, that he had never seen them as women. That was the first time he saw these women as women.
Ramps, staircases, the wooden doors of the rooms, some large, others smaller, all wooden. Houses with the names of flowers, walls with colorful decals, a kitchen and collective dining room. Painted in blues, greens, roses and white. Some places without plaster, many cats in the gardens, television rooms, outpatient clinics. With pictures and objects scattered across the walls, the space has a certain organization, ornaments fill a few places with some possible emotions. Intentions that never end as there must be many other urgencies, but I see meaning in these attempts of coziness. The television on at full blast, almost nobody watches. However, the sound invades the space through these other voices. All of a sudden, phrases and drawings on the walls, scribbles, drafts, interventions. Confused spaces, noisy, empty, deafening, and chaos amidst loneliness.
Fig 2. Elas – Decals, Núcleo Teixeira Brandão, 2016. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães
This place, where so many memories come together in superimposed layers, carries stories that cannot be told in a space where time is other. Here, the artist Arthur Bispo do Rosário lived for many years. His art residency began the day that visions gave him a mission to accomplish in this life.
It is said: on the ground you cannot stay
Because place of head is in the head
Place of body is in the body
You cannot by the walls either
Neither in beds can you stay
Nor in empty space can you stay
Because place of head is in the head.
Place of body is in the bodyStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 52
The Colônia Juliano Moreira today is a district of Rio de Janeiro, bigger than Copacabana. It was a mill that was turned into a farming colony for the mentally ill and soon thereafter to a psychiatric colony. It comprised a set of hospitals and pavilions that at one time had more than 5,500 interns, in addition to a great number of employees, patient families, and others that arrived and went about settling into the place.
It’s not me who likes to be born
They put me to birth every day
And whenever I die I am resuscitated
I am incarnated, disincarnated and reincarnated
They form me in less than a second
If I go away disappear they will look for me wherever I might be
To be looking for gas from the walls to the ceiling
Or in their head and their bodyStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 79
Patrícia Ruth is very nice, a dear one, and paints incredible landscapes – houses, hills and boats – as well as makes handbags and other things that she commercializes in her day to day of the Colônia. She is from Belém do Pará, but made her way to the Colônia at a very young age, coming undone on the roads of this world a very, very long time ago. Enduring violence and tortuous paths she ended up there. An inmate for many years she jumped the walls to flirt and so created a family. It was her who introduced us to the pizzeria, then to the Polo Experimental2 – center of education and culture for the mental health users of the Colônia managed by the Bispo do Rosário Museum of Contemporary Art (mBrac) – all the time talking and showing us how that special place works.
Gradually we discovered other small places, the market, bakery, juice house, tapioca, the town square and other community leisure activities. There are 150 bushels of land comprising woods, rivers, a waterfall, a dam, historic constructions, and other buildings. There is an aqueduct of eight arches and seventy meters in length, one of the first three to be erected in Rio de Janeiro in the middle of the eighteenth century. Between the plantation homestead, the bandstand and other buildings lies the Church of Our Lady of Remedies, inaugurated in 1862 and constructed in a neoclassical style. There is also a municipal school and a set of buildings that are part of the the federal government’s program Minha Casa, Minha Vida [My Home, My Life – a social housing assistance program], where families from various locations have settled, including those that were removed from the Vila Autódromo community because of the construction of the Olympic Village.3
Performance, Arlindo in the cells. It was long and very powerful.
He lived there with Bispo, in the cells for the “dangerous” patients.
Arlindo put several audience members in the cells today.
Of the eleven pavilions of the inmate ward group known as the Ulisses Viana Nucleus only one remains, the others have been demolished. The Pavilion 10 is exactly where Arthur Bispo do Rosário lived and produced his works. There, too, were many other patients considered violent. Arlindo, when he was young, lived with Bispo in this pavilion.
Today the whole environment has changed with the new roads, trains, viaducts and the TransOlympic Highway that cuts through the Colônia and brought light rail transit here.4 The place has much more: an entrance with a portal, a soccer field, loose horses, all female and all male groups of mental health users as well as mixed gender ones, several CAPS [Centros de Atenção Psicossocial – Psychosocial Attention Centers] and many other constructions. The Colônia also comprises many homes of those who live in constant treatment, but who have also built lives, families, and businesses.
Fig 3. Franco da Rocha Nucleus, 2016. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães
We try to stay in this place where many exclusions are concentrated and overflowing with many emotions. Intensities and pulsating lives.
They said that the carers changed after our time there. That they understood the power of art as a possibility to act with mental health users in another way, and that it is possible to find other paths to reach patients, not only by giving them medicine.
There’s a lot of pain in those abandoned walls. Amidst an exuberant nature, imprisoned souls, afflicted, absurd, in daily storms. The beds, the smells and the hospital setting. A group of carers changes one of them lying on a stretcher, stinking, screaming, aching. Those who try to care where everything is lacking, in that precarious place, debate amongst themselves, while others cross the environment slowly, in slow motion. Some broken, others angry and many others full of smiles. An absolute lack. There are the autonomies and those who attend the collective studio Atelier Gaia that is part of the Polo Experimental (called “Polo”).
The Dois Irmãos [Two Brothers] Hill, very similar to its namesake in Leblon, imposes itself wherever you go. Outside of our rooms, a wood stretched to the foot of the mountains and hills that surrounded us. Walls, empty spaces and gates, a soccer field, some lookouts, and staff on duty, evenings filled with thick clouds of mosquitoes entering the rooms. We wrapped ourselves in clothes and scarves covering as much as possible, so as not to suffer from possible bites. But it was hot. A fan helped us. The bus line that crossed the Colônia passed outside our rooms, between the building and the woods, it went around the side and stopped at the bus stop in front of the CAPS, next to the Polo, where we were in residence.
I finished my speech yesterday by citing a phrase from the song written by “Not Recommended”: “The censorship sign on my face says not recommended to society, the warning sign of comfort on my body says not recommended to society…” I stammered and erred citing it, I had to refer to the written citation, I could not read it …
Working with the Teixeira Brandão Nucleus [patient intern group] I met an intern who took care of the garden. Independent, according to reports of the carers and the director of this group, she wakes up early, washes herself, puts on her work clothes and hat, drinks coffee, picks up her tools and goes to the gardens. She spends the day raking leaves and twigs and making little mounds among the trees. She breaks for her lunch and in the afternoon, with the same effort, continues her activity. She does not say a word. Coming back for her afternoon snack, she sits at a table, alone. On the table a cat lies quietly. She opens a fashion magazine. I turn and greet her. I ask if I may take some photographs. She looks well, calm. Silently, she nods in agreement. As I take photographs, she establishes a dialogue with my hands and eyes, between small gestures. She opens the magazine, points out pictures and words, looks at me, looks at the cat, points out other things, nods, different looks, poses for photos. It seems to me that she is enjoying it, but she does not smile, only that calm considered look. When I finish, I say thank you.
I presented the photos in a loop as I spoke. It was fast, 15 minutes, I was nervous, very emotional. We do not know how powerful everything is, I stuttered, citing incorrectly … but the discussion was ok. I was happy with the feedback.
I glance over the wheelchair users and my eye lands on an armchair and a cross-legged naked lady. I approached. This one speaks all the time, in a monotone way, about incomprehensible subjects. I get a little closer. She complains about some things I cannot understand. In a rush, she gets up and leaves the room. Later she returns dressed. I wondered if she did not like my approach. The camera is always invasive. Some like it – it’s always a possibility to somehow become visible, at least to someone who is interested in looking and listening to what they have to say. Others must feel invaded, threatened, and violated. The image is often perverse.
Already fucked
Putting the whole world to come and no pleasure
Not anyStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 125
The Polo is of an ample size. The two rooms for artist residences are on a large L-shaped veranda with pool tables and stacked mattresses used for gymnastics and exercises. There is a large kitchen with a barbecue and a few tables. The veranda’s empty spaces are used in the morning for exercises and for a range of activities at other times. Other doors lead out onto the veranda, with bathrooms, rehearsal rooms, community work, dance, theater, sewing and crafts. The veranda opens out onto a large open patio with concrete benches, a half-improvised clothesline and some flowerbeds with mixed plants and others of just earth where nothing is planted.
In the middle of the patio there is a strange brick building, small, with windows but no doors, and no roof, unfinished, it caught my attention from the beginning. I did not ask, because there are so many questions in these spaces. Every day, I looked at it trying to understand. On the neighboring wall there were some drawings and phrases full of meanings. The late afternoon light is magnificent, golden and hits this wall and the woods just behind it, as the gaze reaches beyond the wall.
On my return to the Colônia in 2017, a year after my residence, I discover that the strange construction of exposed bricks is the work of another of the resident artists, Daniel Murgel, who was there before me.5 Built with the community. It instigated me all the time. Awesome work. There are no doors.
I said yesterday that I felt I had done nothing, so little, a drop in that ocean. Bianca [former education manager at the museum] replied that a drop can mean a lot to them.
The activities proposed by me during the residence in the Colônia culminated in the realization of a complete action of Grassa Crua – a durational performance where I explore issues related to the social norms applied to women’s bodies in contemporary society drawing on struggles with my body searching for its own points of relations. It began and was developed as a postdoctoral research project with Lume Theater Unicamp, between 2015 and 2016. In the Colônia, with the women users of the Franco da Rocha and Teixeira Brandão Nucleuses, I proposed several performative situations to activate their emotions and the relationships of bodies and their ways of expressing themselves. They were moments of dancing, drawing, singing, arranging, applying makeup, tidying up the hair, wearing colorful capes, dressing up, parading on red catwalks, climbing on small red stools, our mini stages, and posing for photos and videos. The days passed between these activities, each day with different proposals, interspersed with other moments where the unexpected occurred. It could be said that almost everything was unexpected.
On the last day of my residency, which took place from August 25th to 30th, 2016, the action was finished with the public presentation of the performance Grassa Crua, in the entrance hall of the museum, relying on public participation and including the women who had participated in the activities during the residency.
Returning to my experience in the spaces themselves… The Polo also features an entrance hall, administration, offices, studios for painting, sculpture and other activities, multiplying spaces with other verandas and a small patio. Unfinished sculptures, pieces of wood and fragments of other materials are scattered across the cement floor in the open space in front of the Atelier Gaia, and will be transformed by the artists who collect what they find and interests them. There are also some flowerbeds in the middle where you can see some flowers and herbs for tea, a boldo [South American herbal plant] shrub and other finds.
I’m feeling the Bispo-trajectory, Bispo pulsating. Life encounters.
During the residence Bianca, a mental health user of the Teixeira Brandão group, spoke between her broken teeth, whispering. It was hard to catch all the words she spoke at great speed, one crashing into the other, all into our ears. For each of us, she revealed some small confessions. Much was said into our ears that wanted to be open, but the information came from many sides. Finding a way in there is perhaps like entering a dense forest, there are many details to see and feel. Many approaches are necessary.
Hunger and cravings for yummy foods, candy, soft drinks: “Bring me some candy.” They ask for everything, cookies, a look, juices and money to buy food. They supplicate love, attention, help, contact…Scary to encounter such loneliness. I met people who had lived there since their childhood only changing their mental health user group from children, to youth and then adult. Some lived in cells and pavilions intended for those considered dangerous and violent. Others moved beyond the walls of the groups, but they never escaped the Colônia. Many families disappeared forever. Another told me that her family was coming to pick her up in a few days, but these dreams, in the main, turn into frustrations, and so many are delusions fueled by the hope and desires of a life, whatever that might be, outside of there.
About yesterday at the Bispo Rosário Museum, during the International Encounter Care as method, I spoke again about our work and also spoke to Raquel Fernandes, Ricardo Resende, and several professionals who accompanied us and even some users who participated. Many aspects were touched on. People spoke of the changes that we caused. Raquel said that we found a very horizontal way to approach the mental health users, without uniforms, commands of power and medicine, that we opened another channel of contact with them. It was beautiful. What we did seems so little faced with all that but it was not little, it was very intense, we touched everyone’s hearts. Other artists who had been residents also spoke and even Patricia spoke. Life pulsates here.
Those who go there to care also inhabit this place: doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, caregivers, artists, curators, and many more. Just a few for all that is needed. They do, unfold, love, talk, irritate, try, sometimes fail, suffer together, and achieve incredible things – in millimeters but ones that can move the world. There is laughter, love, emotions; much emotion. There is also violence, aggression, strife, contention, suffering, pain, anguish, and filth. Complex day-to-day.
Being interned is being imprisoned everyday
I cannot leave they do not let me go through the gate
Maria do Socorro does not let me go through the gate
Mr Nelson does not let me go through the gate either.
I’ve been here for twenty-five years or moreStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 55
In the catwalks many looked at the floor. Others put themselves on display full of laughter, happiness and pure fun. Amidst all the uproar there is a lot of life. Rachel, one of my collaborators, was trying to organize and give commands. In the middle, others circled, shouted, sang and fell across the catwalk. Everyday movements, peeing, drools, attacks, laughter, shouts, happiness, tears, pains, fears and murmurs. The stool was a challenge. They went up, got down, asked for help. Low, very low, the little bench was a provocation to think of the spaces our bodies inhabit. To feel something about the small spaces that imprison us – these illusionary micro stages of highlights and imprisonments. In these parade moments, with their makeup, hair, ornaments and capes, they encountered the stool and most wanted to get up on it. Some were bolder, got up and posed for beautiful photographs, flashes as they posed: “My dream is to be on a magazine cover. If she can, I can too.” They did samba down the catwalk, danced, amused themselves, and a living light in their eyes showed me that the burning flame permitted an instant of freedom. Although in wheelchairs, they turned and amused themselves. There were those who became insecure as they went up, some refused, or simply turned away, but others called for help and their hands were moments of encounter, trust, affection, and complicity.
I’m in an old people’s home
In a hospital of everything that is sickness
In an asylum, place of mad people crazy insaneStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 47
Fig 4. Elas – Fabiana, Franco da Rocha Nucleus, 2016. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães
We sat down to take pictures of them all in white plastic chairs lined up in the Franco da Rocha Nucleus Hall. They wore various clothes. 1. Sleeveless dress, white with blue and green flowers. 2. Beach shorts with green undershirt and white crepe cover with delicate green accents. 3. Long trousers, striped t-shirt, floral skirt over trousers and navy blue sports jacket with white stripes. 4. Blue and white skirt, white shirt and red coat. 5. Flounced skirt, blue sweater knit sweater and black and white striped cape.
Some of them came to the encounters with very well chosen clothes, all combined well. Others were more haphazard. The clothes changed throughout the week and each day our participants returned better dressed. They formed a mosaic of colors and diverse models scattered around that great hall. Photos seduce, we took lots of pictures and selfies as well and some took some photos with our cameras and cell phones. The sofas in a corner were close to the television and the Photo Mural. The green sofa was featured. There were doors to the kitchen and bathrooms. I set up a large table where someone was always handing out paper, pens, biscuits, and other things. Across the hall, a stage with a sound system and, next to it, a small store of used clothes and glasses. They like to dance and sing. Some drew and painted with crayons.
It’s hard to explain what today was like. Exciting, full of discoveries, other ways of seeing, with other emotions, through other pores…
During our return to the Colônia, as part of the Care as Method encounter, we heard from some of the artists who participated in the artistic residencies at the museum, in addition to other invited participants.6 One observation caught my attention. One artist spoke about his wandering around the Colônia and his explorations of the surroundings, to get to know the spaces and region, attending some bars nearby. Night tours. Immediately I remembered two situations.
The first was a speech made the day before at a panel discussion of the event. One of the health professionals, who worked for a few years inside the Colônia, said that she observed how male patients had a freedom to move in and out of the Colônia while women were always confined to the group wards where they were housed. She noted that she had never seen women freely roaming the Colônia.
The second was the memory of our residency experience. I was invited by Daniela Labra to participate in an artistic residency as part of the program of the exhibition Das virgens em cardumes e da cor das auras. For the residency I invited other artists to collaborate with me on the development of the action for Grassa Crua in the Colônia. We were six women – the artists Ana Cristina Colla and Raquel Scotti Hirson (LUME Teatro-UNICAMP), supervisors in the postdoctoral research, provocateurs and directors of the Grassa Crua performance; Mariana Rotili, photographer; Camilla Farias, actress, poet and music and Bruna Reis, psychologist and actress.
BORN CRAZY
My parents wanted me to be crazy.
The normals were envious of me
That I was crazyStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 68
On our first day the staff that took care of the place, where we stayed in residence, showed us all the details, keys, doors, kitchen, workings and the necessary precautions. We were told that at night we should not open the Polo door and by no account let anyone in. They left us phone numbers for any questions or needs. At six o’clock, after the officials closed the door and left, silence took over. We would come back from our activities and hear noises from the woods, fruit falling on the ground, sounds of animals, branches breaking, and the sound of the bus that, from time to time, could be heard just behind the rooms.
The first night we had dinner at the pizzeria with Patricia and on the way back, when we turned in front of the CAPS, a pack of dogs scared us. The watchman called them and we passed. There were also loose horses roaming along the way. And to make our way on foot to the museum and the entrance portal of the Colônia or the “centrinho” [little center] it is necessary to cross a long and dark tunnel located under the Trans Olympic Highway.
There were no more night strolls. After our activities we returned to the Polo for baths, notes and dinner. We did not leave our rooms. No nights to see the stars. That exuberant nature and other local sights were only appreciated during the day. At night we were afraid. I wanted to go out to take nocturnal photographs, but no one else agreed to come, I was tired and afraid. I did not go alone.
There was no time
I was taking in brightness and light
When the light went out
Everything was in darkness
The worldly dawn without lightStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 124
I was thinking about gender issues within that context and to my surprise, listening to the report of one of the other resident artists, who had walked freely, getting to know the place well, this question was rekindled. Immediately I felt our confinement, and yet again, I was surprised by the enormous gap between the experiences of men and women in the world. As much as I have been digging deeper into this theme for almost three decades, I am still surprised by this difference that is so marked in all environments and locales.
The day of visit to the Colônia was of full raw emotion.
Here it is useful to remember the number of patients of indefinite gender that we encountered in the two female groups that we worked with. I tried to understand if they were lesbians, dykes, transsexuals, if they had these questions, if they questioned this, but it was not clear-cut. Our time was short, it was not possible to investigate these understandings more deeply. But gender dysphoria and the disorders and conflicts of some patients were evident. I wondered, then, how many were there because they did not fit the standards and could not handle it.
I found some mental health users. There was that sad, half-elated, half-cheerful, half-suspicious and somewhat enthusiastic look. Felt at home.
The return to the museum was of great emotion. It was in 2017, a year after getting to know them, parading, posing for photos and breaking stools with them, those involved in the residence with the Grassa Crua project. And I also met other mental health users of the groups, caregivers, other professionals involved – health, education, curatorial, administrative, management – connected to the Colônia Juliano Moreira, as well as others involved in the Care as Method encounter that had come from so many other places and institutions. All have in common works developed in these perspectives.
Knowing and exchanging experiences was a mixture of love, speed and dizziness. Lots of information, a world of possibilities, fleeting encounters, foods that fermented ideas and all sorts of exchanges and connections. What is deployed, what engages, created friction or not. Perhaps, after a time of sitting with it all and feeling in the body, it will be possible to glimpse.
I could see the entire collection of Arthur Bispo do Rosário in the “anoxic bubble”,7 being conserved, organized and systematized in an open public process, where all interested visitors can have access to the environment and see the “bubble” happening. The importance of this process for the preservation of the collection is an achievement for the field of the arts and for all professionals who know the Bispo’s collection. I was thrilled to see this objective, so fundamental to the preservation of this important collection, being realized. Since I knew the works of Bispo, I felt its strength, dimension and performative presence. It was in taking photographs of the collection, inside the room where the pieces were stored, where I had first witnessed the enormous need for the organization and preservation of this collection.8 At the time, the material was in its own room and the process of organization, conservation and preservation had just started, but at the time there was so much more to be done to ensure that the entire work of Bispo would be safeguarded alive and well. So I was seized by the anguish that troubled me, a sense of fear that screamed within me, that Bispo’s labors would one day disappear. Here, I was able to witness a team working hard for this to be an accomplished task striving to advance new initiatives grounded in this fundamental action.
Fig 5. Arlindo in performance, Celas Pavilhão 10, 2017. Photo: Fernanda Magalhães
The performance of Arlindo, drawing from his experiences and memories in the cells with Bispo do Rosário, was remarkable. He became Bispo and was himself in the environment of the cells, now empty. In uniform and with some objects he re-experienced those days and deeds of his youth, confined in that pavilion meant for those considered violent. It was strong, a reperformance of life. He planned, produced and executed his plan for the group that would come to Colônia for the Care as Method encounter and this so special event. It was a long performance also comprising relationships with the audience that was present. At the end, Arlindo arrested some in the cells. It was incredible and pierced many layers in me.
Look how many are with me
Are alone
Pretending they’re alone
To be able to be with meStela do Patrocínio, 2001, 65
In times of artificial lives that multiply, with emotions controlled by pills that regulate lives according to market interests, it seems necessary to follow all the rules in order to belong. The more one conforms and accepts the regulatory norms, the more one is inserted within the system it is inserted and the greater the control over bodies, souls and thoughts. Then I think about the choices, freedoms and autonomies of each one. Can we live in accordance with our emotions or is it necessary to simulate and perform daily so as not to be abject in our own society?
Those considered normal, those living within so-called standards, are usually controlled by stimulants, drugs that soothe or energize, barbiturates, sleeping tablets, anabolic ones, supplements, antidepressants and a whole wide range of pills that control joys, sleep, fury and all the emotions that may cause some malaise. So what, after all, is the difference between those inside and outside these places of exclusion?
To live with these people who are on the margins and who express themselves so intensely, with life force, who exert emotions viscerally, is liberating. There are fears and scary aspects about differences, with what is not fully controlled or dominated, but one is left with the main perception of those who are not formatted, who are fully lives with all their oddities and differences.
What frightens us, within our societies of extreme controls, is perhaps this lack of control of those who do not fit in; those who are not subject to norms and do not conform.
They wanted to know if we are aware of all these changes. And to know how much the actions of Grassa Crua affected us and our own work.
Being confined to a psychiatric ward usually means sadness, suffering, and often torture, but there is also a presence of life in its own flux outside social patterns of coexistence. A different energy pulsates there. Spaces like these where the production of exceptional work happens such as that by Arthur Bispo do Rosário, Arlindo, Patricia, Clovis, Stela do Patrocínio and so many others.
Thus, I could feel the sufferings and also other forces in that place, the dense nature, the people and the events.
An exuberance overflows and strikes me.
Fig 6. Elas – Bishop’s Pavilion, 2016- Photo: Fernanda Magalhães.
***
Fernanda Magalhães
(Londrina, 1962) – Artist, Photographer, Performer, Professor of Arts at the State University of Londrina. Post-Doc, LUME Theater / Unicamp, 2016. Awarded the VIII Marc Ferrez Photography Prize in 1995 Minc / Funarte for the Project “The Representation of the Naked Fat Woman in Photography”. Published the books Corpo Re-Construção Ação Ritual Performance and A Estalagem das Almas with Karen Debértolis. Organized fac-simile book Eulália Neutra (2011). She has works in the following collections: Maison Europèene de la Photographie, Paris; Oscar Niemeyer Museum, Curitiba; Joaquim Paiva Collection of Contemporary Photography, Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro. She created and coordinates the Grassa Crua project, as well as The Nature of Life and The Photographic Expression and the Blind among others. http://www.fernandamagalhaes.com.br/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DDknRfJBZU
________
1 Stela do Patrocínio lived for almost thirty years interned at the Colônia Juliano Moreira. Her poetic words were recorded and years later transcribed and organized by the writer Viviane Mosé into a collection of poetry. Stela do Patrocínio, Reino dos Bichos e dos animais é o meu nome (Rio de Janeiro: Azougue Editorial, 2001) 82. [Translator’s Note T.N. At present there are no published translations of Stela’s poetry. These are free translations for the purposes of this essay].
2 [Editors Note E.N.: Administered by mBrac, the Polo Experimental is a cultural community center, that via the idea of togetherness, integrates cultural actions in the Colônia in an old remodeled Pavilion transformed to house the activities of: Escola Livre de Artes (Free School of the Arts – ELA); Casa B (Home B – artistic residency); Atelier Gaia (collective artist studio); the income generation project Art and Garden Company and the leisure program Pedra Branca (White Stone.).]
3 [E.N.: Vila Autódromo – a former fisherman colony and small village where approximately 500 families lived at the edge of the Jacarepaguá lake which was expropriated and used for what today is part of the Olympic park. For information on the struggle of families to remain in the area see the dialogue section of this magazine: http://institutomesa.org/revistamesa/edicoes/5/portfolio/maria-da-penha-macena-luiz-claudio-silva-e-luiza-andrade-en/?lang=en]
4 [E.N.: The TransOlympic Avenue was constructed for the Olympics and Paralympic Games of 2016. Its construction caused the destruction of 200,000m² of Atlantic Forest at the limits of the State Park of Pedra Branca, the second largest urban forest in the world. It cost about 270 million dollars and in a violent and arbitrary way divided the territory of Colônia Juliano Moreira into two parts. Under the avenue, today, a small tunnel is the only link between mBrac and the Polo Experimental.]
5 [E.N.: The artist came back to the Colônia in October 2017 as part of her participation in the activities of the International Encounter Care as Method # 2. An essay on the construction of the house at the Polo Experimental as part of the residency by the artist Daniel Murgel titled “A Stay at the Colônia Juliano Moreira”, is also featured in this magazine: http://institutomesa.org/revistamesa/edicoes/5/portfolio/daniel-murgel-uma-temporada-na-colonia-juliano-moreira-en/?lang=en]
6 International Encounter Care as Method # 2, Rio de Janeiro, 2017.
7 Anabolic bubble is used to create non toxic environments to de-infest and protect historic collections.
8 I photographed part of Bispo’s collection for my research for my doctorate in art history and my work as an art professor at the State University of Londrina Marta Dantas. The photographs were shot in a room annexed to the art storage of the museum in 2002.
