sempre vai passar
I’m writing this text upon waking up on October 31, 2022, with teary eyes and a relieved heart.
When I made this flag in early 2019, sad and discouraged by the choice of most Brazilians , I sought to concentrate on a thought that would drive me forward, to go onward, and so I grabbed onto the mantra Vai Passar [This Will Pass] but with the certainty that we would have to undergo a long process, requiring a great deal of resistance and continuous work for it to actually pass. On the other side of the flag, the question mark establishes a mediation with the uncertainties of the future and beckons the viewer to think about doubt as a factor of extra motivation, open to the powers that insist on resistance to what is given or being consolidated.
The flag was unfurled for one year, from April 2019 to March 2020, at the top of the dome of the Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro. This will be, however, the first time that it is shown with just one of its sides visible, resting the question mark against the wall. During this moment of transition of governments and ideals, Vai Passar remains strongly on its course toward the full recovery of democracy, toward a juster society, respect for science and for workers in the cultural and art fields and, above all, toward the binding energy of love that unites us.
It is time for doubt and fear to give way to the reconstruction of the country, to new proposals and ways of being together.
With this in mind, I chose for this show works from the Roberto Marinho collection that deeply affect me as an artist and, on that basis, I included others that are related with these choices, for example, Leonilson’s painting and the drawings by Ismael Nery and Jean Cocteau, along with a work that I made in the 1980s that resembles a drawing by Mira Schendel in terms to its economy of lines. The selection is diverse in regard to artists and media, as is the collection itself, though it is unique as a whole.
I dedicate the power of these works gathered here to the nearly 700 thousand Brazilians who were taken by the pandemic, to their families, and to my colleagues who departed and can no longer be present, celebrating and experiencing this change together with us, even though some are here, represented by their works.