fim de tarde de uma sexta feira - Caetano + Gerhard Richter

Amante Amado
(Jorge Ben)

Eu quero que você me pegue
Me abrace me aperte me beije me ame
E depois me mande embora
Que eu vou feliz da vida amor
Que eu vou feliz da vida amor
Quero ser mandado
Adorado, acariciado, machucado e amado por você
E depois pode me mandar embora
Mesmo que sejam quatro horas da manhã
Chovendo, fazendo frio amor
E me proibindo de olhar pra outra mulher qualquer
Que eu vou feliz da vida e vitorioso
Pois eu sou o seu escravo amor
Pois eu sou o seu amante amado amor



Two couples > Gerhard Richter, 1966.

a new year II

Intuição em destaque sinaliza claramente todos os caminhos que precisa tomar. Mudanças mentais, sonhos clarividentes, percepções certeiras. As respostas que você busca na lógica encontram-se no sentimento, que norteia e dá sentido. Aproxime-se da sua tribo com alegria.

a new year

Ok, so I haven't written a lot about my life lately. That's because I've been busy. Which is a good sign I suppose. Today is a year since I decided to change my life and move to a new country where a new life, with all the risks and opportunities that comes with any big move, had been waiting for me.

And as I approach my 3-0 birthday this year.(ok, there's still over 6 months to go...but the crisis has slowly began to form on my head!) I can see that it was a smart move. Of course it doesn't feel like that every day, but so, who is sure of their choices everyday anyway?

So, as resolutions go I think I pretty much got everything I'd hoped for last year:

1. a nice house - yes, I have been living in a lovely, big house with a great kitchen where I continue to cook for my friends, but with a difference: I also have a garden now and although England isn't famous for its nice weather I surely make the most of my backgarden on the weekends, reading, chatting and sunbathing. Now we only need a barbecue!
2. a nice job - after a couple of months working in a bakery and enjoying that feeling of not having to much to worry about (at the price of not having much money to spare as well) I started a new job that has opened up lots of new opportunities and has put me in contact with various people. So, if at one moment I thought that all I could be was an architect and then, a few years after a project manager or a graphic designer, now I have learnt a lot about curating, managing and producing art exhibitions as well as PRing for all sorts of cultural events. Not only can I make a smashing cappucino but I can also write telegrams now!
3. a masters degree - it will take me over a year to complete that but I'm on my way. It has been great to start studying again after 5 years only working and my classmates are so nice! It's a shame we only see each other once a week, but still, it feels like everyweek I have the chance to get to know one person more than I did the week before. Looking forward to the end of the semester though, kind of need a little vacation! Fingers crossed for the presentation tomorrow. I've been having a hard time speaking clearly in English. And I thought that I had passed the phase of being nervous in front of people...
4. friends - that's one of the best things about moving. You meet so many new people! English, Japanese, Polish, Israelian, South African, Italian... London is probably one of the most cosmopolitan place to be and although I live in a Brazilian "bubble" (I live with brazilians, work with brazilians and speak portuguese 80% of my time) it's incredible to be amongst so many different people all the time.

So as drummond would say: Para ganhar um ano-novo que mereça este nome, você, meu caro, tem de merecê-lo, tem de fazê-lo novo... or to win a New Year that actually deserves this name you have, my dear, to deserve it, to do it all over again...

So here I am, remembering the past year and cheering for a bright New Year ahead!

Written by Annie Choi, the ‘open letter’ was published in Pidgin Magazine - a publication of the graduate students of the Princeton School of Architecture.

Enjoy.

Once, a long time ago in the days of yore, I had a friend who was studying architecture to become, presumably, an architect.
This friend introduced me to other friends, who were also studying architecture. Then these friends had other friends who were architects - real architects doing real architecture like designing luxury condos that look a lot like glass dildos. And these real architects knew other real architects and now the only people I know are architects. And they all design glass dildos that I will never work or live in and serve only to obstruct my view of New Jersey.

Do not get me wrong, architects. I like you as a person. I think you are nice, smell good most of the time, and I like your glasses. You have crazy hair, and if you are lucky, most of it is on your head. But I do not care about architecture. It is true. This is what I do care about:

* burritos
* hedgehogs
* coffee

As you can see, architecture is not on the list. I believe that architecture falls somewhere between toenail fungus and invasive colonoscopy in the list of things that interest me.

Perhaps if you didn’t talk about it so much, I would be more interested. When you point to a glass cylinder and say proudly, hey my office designed that, I giggle and say it looks like a bong. You turn your head in disgust and shame. You think, obviously she does not understand. What does she know? She is just a writer. She is no architect. She respects vowels, not glass cocks. And then you say now I am designing a lifestyle center, and I ask what is that, and you say it is a place that offers goods and services and retail opportunities and I say you mean like a mall and you say no. It is a lifestyle center. I say it sounds like a mall. I am from the Valley, bitch. I know malls.

Architects, I will not lie, you confuse me. You work sixty, eighty hours a week and yet you are always poor. Why aren’t you buying me a drink? Where is your bounty of riches? Maybe you spent it on merlot. Maybe you spent it on hookers and blow. I cannot be sure. It is a mystery. I will leave that to the scientists to figure out.

Architects love to discuss how much sleep they have gotten. One will say how he was at the studio until five in the morning, only to return again two hours later. Then another will say, oh that is nothing. I haven’t slept in a week. And then another will say, guess what, I have never slept ever. My dear architects, the measure of how hard you’ve worked and how much you’ve accomplished is not related to the number of hours you have not slept. Have you heard of Rem Koolhaas? He is a famous architect. I know this because you tell me he is a famous architect. I hear that Rem Koolhaas is always sleeping. He is, I presume, sleeping right now. And I hear he gets shit done. And I also hear that in a stunning move, he is making a building that looks not like a glass cock, but like a concrete vagina. When you sleep more, you get vagina. You can all take a lesson from Rem Koolhaas.

Life is hard for me, please understand. Architects are an important part of my existence. They call me at eleven at night and say they just got off work, am I hungry? Listen, it is practically midnight. I ate hours ago. So long ago that, in fact, I am hungry again. So yes, I will go. Then I will go and there will be other architects talking about AutoCAD shortcuts and something about electric panels and can you believe that is all I did today, what a drag. I look around the table at the poor, tired, and hungry, and think to myself, I have but only one bullet left in the gun. Who will I choose?

I have a friend who is a doctor. He gives me drugs. I enjoy them. I have a friend who is a lawyer. He helped me sue my landlord. My architect friends have given me nothing. No drugs, no medical advice, and they don’t know how to spell subpoena. One architect friend figured out that my apartment was one hundred and eighty seven square feet. That was nice. Thanks for that.

I suppose one could ask what someone like me brings to architects like yourselves. I bring cheer. I yell at architects when they start talking about architecture. I force them to discuss far more interesting topics, like turkey eggs. Why do we eat chicken eggs, but not turkey eggs? They are bigger. And people really like turkey. See? I am not afraid to ask the tough questions.

So, dear architects, I will stick around, for only a little while. I hope that one day some of you will become doctors and lawyers or will figure out my taxes. And we will laugh at the days when you spent the entire evening talking about some European you’ve never met who designed a building you will never see because you are too busy working on something that will never get built. But even if that day doesn’t arrive, give me a call anyway, I am free.

Yours truly,
Annie Choi

da maior importância

Foi um pequeno momento, um jeito
Uma coisa assim
Era um movimento que aí você não pôde mais
Gostar de mim direito
Teria sido na praia, medo
Vai ser um erro, uma palavra
A palavra errada
Nada, nada
Basta quase nada
E eu já quase não gosto
E já nem gosto do modo que de repente
Você foi olhada por nós

Porque eu sou tímido e teve um negócio
De você perguntar o meu signo quando não havia
Signo nenhum
Escorpião, sagitário, não sei que lá
Ficou um papo de otário, um papo
Ia sendo bom
É tão difícil, tão simples
Difícil, tão fácil
De repente ser uma coisa tão grande
Da maior importância
Deve haver uma transa qualquer
Pra você e pra mim
Entre nós

E você jogando fora, agora
Vá embora, vá!
Há de haver um jeito qualquer, uma hora!
Há sempre um homem
Para uma mulher
Há dez mulheres para cada um
Uma mulher é sempre uma mulher etc. e tal
E assim como existe disco voador
E o escuro do futuro
Pode haver o que está dependendo
De um pequeno momento puro de amor

Mas você não teve pique e agora
Não sou eu quem vai
Lhe dizer que fique
Você não teve pique
E agora não sou eu quem vai
Lhe dizer que fique
Mas você
Não teve pique
E agora
Não sou eu quem vai
Lhe dizer que fique

Maria Bonomi

Exhibition dates

6 May to 10 June 2009

The Embassy of Brazil proudly presents an exhibition of Maria Bonomi, one of the most respected visual artists currently working in Brazil.

Bonomi is recognised for her prolific production, covering a wide variety of media, including large public art pieces scattered in various cities around the world. Her work also features in both notable private and public collections in Brazil and abroad.

The exhibition will present a series of large format engravings, woodcuts and lithographs, as well as sculptures. Some of these works were displayed at Huelva Museum, Spain, in 2005 and at her latest solo exhibition at Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, in 2008. The show will also present a selection of previously unseen works.

Bonomi’s works are regarded as a milestone in the history of xylography on account of the special treatment given to the matrices, transforming them into highly elaborate sculptural pieces in their own right.

There are three fundamental vectors in Bonomi's route: her respect for the artistic craft, the craftsmanship in the technique of woodcutting and her engagement in the production of large scale public works. She has turned woodcutting into a paradigm and has recovered it via seemingly distant themes: lyical visions of planted fields, horizons, and poetic forms capable of unfolding into multiple meanings and endless cycles. These shapes repeat and multiply themselves in various ways, yet generating new identities each time: ‘I always do the same thing, and it is always different.’

Born in 1935 in Meina, Italy, Maria Bonomi holds a PhD in Public Art from the University of São Paulo. Her work includes sculpture, engraving and costume and set design. She has been awarded various prizes, amongst which are Best National Engraver, VIII São Paulo Biennial, 1965; Theadoron Prize, V Paris Biennial, 1967; International Jury Prize, XV International Engraving Biennial in Ljubljana, 1983; and Santos Prize – Engraving, Bunge Foundation, 1997.

Visitor information

Gallery 32

32 Green Street
London W1K 7AT
+44(0)20 7399 9282
gallery32@brazil.org.uk
www.brazil.org.uk/gallery32

Tuesday to Friday, 11am to 6pm

Saturday, 11am to 5pm

Free admission

now the whites