Ricardo Coelho (Brazil)
Visual Artist
Ricardo Coelho was born in the city of São Paulo in 1974 and since 2009 lives and works in São João del-Rei, Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is a multimedia visual artist, professor at Universidade Federal de São João del-Rei – UFSJ, independent curator and exhibition designer. He holds a PhD in Visual Arts from the Instituto de Artes da Unesp (2015), with part of the research conducted at the Universitat de Barcelona (2014); Master in Visual Arts from the Instituto de Artes da Unesp (2003) and Bachelor in Visual Arts from the same institution (1999).
My Body My Home
By Ricardo Coelho, Brazil
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Today, more than ever, it seems impossible to build a work that has the body as a central element, considering only the restricted – though excessive – scope of visual representations. Our cultural context, in which multiple social, political, religious, legal, medical, scientific and sexual representations of the body are superimposed, highlights the complexity that emerges from this emerging web of meanings.
Similarly, we can no longer ignore the dynamic relationship that is established between the body of the work and the body of the observer at the moment of aesthetic fruition. This virtual space is always permeated by individual experiences in a constant, but not always conscious, dialogue with the other representations produced in the universe of culture. As Alain Corbin (2009, p. 9) expressed: “The body is a fiction, a set of mental representations, an unconscious image that is elaborated, dissolved, reconstructed through the history of the subject, with the mediation of social discourses and symbolic systems”.
What is or what can the body be, this fragile and opaque wrapping that encloses the subject, the beginning and the end of humanity itself? At this moment, the world seems to have no answers to this question. To foreigners or simply to those who are forced to move for the maintenance of life, their right to freedom and symbolic exercise is suppressed, leaving only the recognition of their own fragility: “My body, my Home” (2016).
Ricardo Coelho, 2016
Technical data
Original idea, direction and photography: Ricardo Coelho
Preparation of actors: Luís Firmato
Actors:
Érika Santos
Júnio de Carvalho
Luís Firmato
Mar de Paula
Pi Videira
Ricardo Coelho
Thales Henrique Rocha
Video and Sound Editing: OSSO videoarte
Technical Scene: Ricardo Coelho
Production: OSSO videoarte, 2016
