WHITE TABLE

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In Projeto Mesa Branca / Tarsila (2017), an unpublished work presented by CAL-UnB, Gustavo von Ha engages with this mythical Tarsila by creating an illusionistic space that addresses the symbolic construction surrounding the artist, the importance still attributed to authorship today, and the persistence of an auratic element in the elaboration of criticism—and of the market—regarding the artist.

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Tarsila has been the object of various approaches over time—nationalist modernism, the recovery and documentation of São Paulo modernism, and feminist art criticism. Tarsila do Amaral’s work becomes intertwined with her figure, history, and personality; work and myth are often one and the same.

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Tarsila has been, and continues to be, the subject of multiple interpretations by art criticism and art history in Brazil and abroad over time: whether within the very context of São Paulo modernism, from the nationalist perspective of Mário de Andrade, or in the present day, as a privileged figure in a feminist revision of the history of that same modernism and of the local art narrative itself.

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Ana Avelar, curator