Brazilian Wax was born out of the EMERGE artistic residency “Carnaval de Torres Vedras 100 anos”, conceived and produced by the EMERGE team, which invited Gustavo von Ha (a Brazilian artist not residing in Portugal) to create visual and performative works within this carnivalesque context and the experience of the city, and João Silvério to curate the residency and the exhibition. From this we can already infer that “this entire project took shape as a collective practice: the artist, the production structure, and the curatorship”¹. The artist brought with him two key pieces from his studio – a smaller copy of Michelangelo’s Pietà and a phallic mold similar to a baby bottle in clay, recalling Bolsonaro’s ridiculous words slandering the opposition in a recent and tragic past for Brazil. Although these elements offer clues to what the curator identifies as three central lines that support the project’s structure – “relating themes such as European cultural heritage, the models instituted by structures of power and subjected to popular criticism, and derisive, perhaps playful irony that associates the vernacular and popular culture with questions of gender and identity”¹ – the artist did not arrive in Torres Vedras with a ready-made conceptual strategy, stating that “the discourse and the work are born together – it’s almost like (…) body and soul”².

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The first decision was not to produce an obvious, merely thematic comment on Carnival – “when I arrived, the city was already beginning to be transformed (…) and I kept thinking about not talking about Carnival, because that would be too literal. So I thought about the structures and strategies that circulate within this universe, that are inside it, in order to produce some works, let’s say, based on my own artistic strategies, on my own limits (…). A Brazilian speaking about Carnival, I think that would empty it out a bit, and in my work I always like to leave room for a lot of ambiguity, because the work has to have autonomy; it has to stand on its own”².

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Two important points can already be seen at this starting moment: the artist’s political character and the dissonance between Brazilian Carnival and the Carnival of Torres Vedras, as well as between both cultures, geographies, realities, and fictions. The first is central in von Ha’s trajectory; for the artist, the acts of seeing, thinking, and creating are intrinsically political – “Then we go back to that whole question: what are the limits? What is art? What isn’t? What is the role of the artist? I’m always asking myself that: what exactly is my field of action? It is always political by nature, because everything we do in the collective sphere is politics – interference in the polis, in the city, is pure politics (…). This is a part that is inherent in my work, which is completely political, even though it has something delirious about it, somewhat fun even, a bit meme-like”². This fundamental characteristic is reflected both in the construction of multiple layers of meaning and materialization, and in the methodologies used, related to disciplines such as anthropology and sociology, alongside intersections between currents in art history and their blending with contemporary media, reviving Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction, now displaced to the digital age.

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The working process begins with historical research at the Centro de Artes e Criatividade de Torres Vedras, where the conceptual construction of the imaginary museum – already suggested by the graffitied copy of the Pietà – starts to take shape. At the same time, field research unfolds through a complete immersion in the city, branching into the observation of the Carnival’s emergence and the discovery of the pichagens/graffiti-covered surfaces that abound in the city. These are mapped, documented by the artist, and later translated into embroideries, paintings, and neon works that recall Pop Art. Both paths exceed the traditional limits of art and signal an identifiable and signature mark – or the subversion of such marks – present both on bodies and on walls. In the first line, the exposure/concealment binary is intensified, as is the inversion or revelation of identity during Carnival, seen as a pagan event of excess and exception, and, in João Silvério’s words, a “moment in which it becomes urgent to be the other of oneself”¹.

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Here the second point mentioned above emerges – “I started (…) observing people, the clothing, (…) and I began to notice a certain pattern that was repeated in both colors and textures; and then, yes, came the encounter between my Brazilian Carnival and the Carnival here. The first thing has to do with the relationship with skins.”² While in Brazil, as it is summer, bodies are almost naked and adorned – similar to Indigenous peoples, who inspired that celebration – in Torres Vedras, as it is winter and the slogan of the ‘most Portuguese Carnival in Portugal’ is upheld, the music is mostly Brazilian, but inside there is no brasilidade, and the skin (exposed there) is here covered by other skins that imitate animals, in a kind of camouflage. Moreover, the artist realized that this relationship with skin goes beyond the scope of Carnival and marks (at times surreptitiously) our everyday social life – “So I started crossing all this information (…) about these layers of skins, the skins that occupy the city, the skins that occupy us, the skins we inhabit, what we want to show, what we want to hide”². The curator’s words, in tune with von Ha’s conceptual and artistic strategies, reinforce this idea – “The body is a political territory where changes and transitions occur in relation to the Other. The body is, therefore, the place of affirmation of celebration and of camouflage”¹.

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An unexpected encounter with two heavily tattooed residents of Torres Vedras – Ana Rafaela Duarte and Milton Faria – culminated in the video where they appear covering their tattoos with makeup, which, according to the artist, tied everything together and conceptually resolved the project. This video-performance involves not only the question of reversing an identity marker through the oscillation between concealment and revelation, but also an artistic strategy by von Ha of becoming co-author of his own work by including the community’s intervention. The leftover makeup was used to paint fake leopard and zebra skins, some with camouflaged patterns – La Danse stands out as a reference to Matisse’s painting – others generating camouflage similar to human skin. We later find out that this foundation is Von Honey – a cosmetic that exists only in one of the exhibition’s display cases, in an advertisement circulating on buses and in the imagination (and desire) of those who see it. It is multi-purpose, also serving to clean the house. This irony and deconstruction of standardized social behaviors runs through the entire exhibition and is latent in the abrasiveness of the title Brazilian Wax – the hair-removal technique exported from Brazil and named in the United States – whose wax is used in some of the works.

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The atmosphere of the two exhibition rooms, with their profusion of materials, techniques, and references, could be framed within the Apollonian/Dionysian binary coined by Nietzsche to explain the birth of a work of art. The Dionysian excess of the diversity of works already mentioned and the subversion of the exhibition space – one room painted in Chroma Key green, transforming it into a film set where the visitor becomes co-author by using the Instagram filter Chroma-Ha – contrasts with the stripped-down, ritualistic aspect of an almost sacralization, ironized, of the black monolith inspired by Stanley Kubrick and the two phallic baby bottles (resembling saints) – one in bronze and the other in ceramic with Portuguese tile motifs – framed by a kind of baroque borders rich in meanings (one associated with Brazil, alluded to earlier, and the other recalling Caldas da Rainha ceramics). The monolith also carries the ambiguity of meanings inherent in von Ha’s work by “hinting at what that environment is and what it might become (…) starting from its own black monolith. When you use the app and look at it, there are two monoliths conversing and creating another world”², while simultaneously echoing the existential paradox encapsulated in the object (and in life on Earth).

The collaborative dimension of the project, the multiplicity of layers, meanings, and reminiscences/rebirths, and the creative and interpretive freedom offered to the visitor/participant – without compromising the internal logic of the conceptual structure – transform Brazilian Wax into an open work, and the artistic residency “will resonate for a long time, because it had a huge impact”² on the artist’s production. Proof of this is the extension of the Von Honey cosmetics advertisement (with Carol Marra), which will be released in Umbigo #84.

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Brazilian Wax is on view at EMERGE’s Casa Azul until April 1 and will feature a guided tour by the curator on the 25th, at 4:30 p.m.

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(1) Silvério, João. (2023). ocultação e chromaqui: como se fosse uma máscara (curatorial text);
(2) Conversation with Gustavo von Ha at Casa Azul, March 11, 2023.

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