… semearás nu, nu ararás.
E nu colherás…
Hesíodo
El otro camino, que sin embargo es el mismo.
Julio Cortázar

The works

When we enter the gallery, we are greeted by beautiful coloured cloths hanging from the walls and ceiling. Loose in space, they flutter in the air like flags. Linen is an organic fabric, traditionally used as a support for oil paintings. Here, the artist uses it as the basis for her painting, taking advantage of its vibrant industrial colours, on which she draws and paints, letter by letter, verses by authors that most often include the word dream. (Dream incarnate)..

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At the Almoloya de Juárez Women’s Penitentiary in the State of Mexico, a group of 14 women deprived of their liberty embroidered some verses by the Cuban poet José Martí:

Yo sueño  con los ojos
abiertos y de dia
y noche siempre sueño.

and added their dreams. A golden sun and golden letters on sky blue; a silver moon and silver letters on navy blue linen. Then, in another handwriting, they embroidered their humble dreams, between love and freedom:

que vuelo…
com el mar…
com una vida más libre…
com algo mejor…
abrazarte otra vez…
voltar a verte…
contigo…

Modest dreams for lonely women. Marilá reports that the inmates do not receive visitors, as if the fact that they are imprisoned were a source of shame for their families and friends. In the sewing workshop, they gathered to embroider their dreams. (Sueño despierto).

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The artist photographs the hands of workers performing their tasks. They are employees of a printing company, hotel staff, delivery workers, construction workers and workers at the São Paulo Biennial. She asks them to answer what they want, assuring them of anonymity. The exhibition features six polyptychs with photographs and their answers in their original handwriting. The hands, laborious, work. The desires scream. They are frightening in their simplicity, their basicness. No one wants to travel to space, or even to Europe or Miami.

I want to be a professional truck driver. One writes, objectively. And we imagine him fulfilling his desire, changing jobs and travelling the roads of Brazil in a red truck.

That collective holidays return in June. Several hotel employees want these holidays, which have unfortunately been cancelled. But they also want a toilet near the hotel (How is that possible in a hotel full of toilets?) and a rest area (How is that possible…?)

The end of winter. State the ones that miss and covet the sunshine.

Those who miss the sunshine want it.
Time, time. Those who don’t have time desire it. (We still have desires).

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In Guadalajara, Mexico, it is common to see street vendors selling ice lollies with a conical tip, shaped like rockets. The artist brought the shapes from Mexico, produced the ice lollies in different flavours and distributed them in the gallery and on the street. Pineapple, mango, strawberry, and grape. Each ice lolly is delivered with a colourful napkin with information about global warming and its consequences. (Foguetex do futuro)

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During the exhibition, a publication will be launched in which the artist recounts a trip she takes to Francisco Morato, in the São Paulo Metropolitan Region, where Neide, her former housekeeper, lives. Motivated by an invitation from an airline company, Marilá makes the journey, first by public transport, as Neide used to do: metro, train, bus. After two and a half hours, she arrives at her destination. The next day, from the helicopter, she sees Neide’s house; only twenty minutes after leaving Av. Faria Lima.

In addition to the story, the publication includes quotes from Anne Sibran, the poem Mapa by Ana Martins Marques, the photograph Pega de banco de Metrô ou escultura para o herói desconhecido (Grab the metro seat or sculpture for the unknown hero) by Carlos Zílio, 1977, and a map of the route by metropolitan transport. (Your time in your hands). …

… and the days.

Marilá Dardot’s days are spent in more or less accidental crossings between countries and continents. Brazil, yes, and Mexico; sometimes Portugal. Calzada de Tlalpan can connect with Avenida Paulista and lead to Avenida da Torre de Belém. Always in Portuguese, but sometimes in Spanish, Marilá cherishes words. She takes them from their safest places: novels, poems; she pulls them out from time to time, but then gives them another place, where they rest happily. A garden, a park, a backyard; in this case: colourful, vibrant canvases where they rest in delicate contrasts. Poets speak of dreams and the artist embodies them in the archaic weave of linen, the natural fibre used to make handkerchiefs, sheets, nightgowns, petticoats, shrouds and canvases. Canvases on which portraits, landscapes and battles were painted. But now they are used to paint verses.

Me queimo em sonhos, tocando estrelas

Entre o real e o sonho
seremos nós a vertigem

This is the only work in this exhibition that was created exclusively by the artist. They are paintings, or rather non-paintings, that make words fly, traces of colour on coloured canvases.

Two works in this exhibition – Sueño despierto and Ainda temos desejo – are works that rely on the collaboration of specific participants: women imprisoned in an institution or workers. The participants, let us call them that, answer questions about their desires or their dreams. The workers’ desires appear among the photographs showing anonymous hands at work. The women’s dreams, embroidered in silver thread on linen rectangles, complete José Martí’s poem. It is clear that the participants belong to predetermined groups, they are prisoners and workers, who may or may not become spectators. Marilá displays the words of these women, these workers, and makes us reflect on their situation. Wishing for the end of winter, as simple as the desire may seem, reminds us that many must work in unheated environments, without warm clothes and, sometimes, without enough food. Dreaming of the sea may be the dream of freedom for those who are deprived of it.

In these works, the identity of the hired subject is a central component, which brings them closer to what Claire Bishop calls delegated performance, which occurs when the artist hires non-artists or specialists from other fields to do the work. However, these are not performances in the literal sense of the word: the performance takes place far from the eyes of the viewer, when the imprisoned women gather to embroider in the sewing room or when the workers fill out their questionnaires.

We must understand that what is presented to us, however finished it may seem, is the residue of a performance that we do not see, which takes place when the artist meets with the community, presents her project and establishes the modes of realisation.

Marilá brings us closer to different social contexts and allows us to access the voices of those we have never heard before. Hotel employees, carpenters and assemblers at the São Paulo Biennial, women prisoners in Mexico. In the proposals, the political insinuates itself through small stories, those of the fourteen women, those of the workers at periodic art exhibitions, or those of the exhausted hotel attendants.

Finally, Foguetex do futuro (Rocket of the Future) is an action in which Dardot offers passers-by rocket-shaped ice lollies, accompanied by a napkin with information about the catastrophic future of our planet.

Fruit juice, ice, heat, the informal economy, scientific forecasts and SpaceX, the work, explains the artist, proposes a sensory experience that invites reflection on the environment, time and global responsibility, alerting us to a deeper understanding of the collective need to act on urgent challenges. I think of Felix Gonzalez Torres’ proposals when he refers to Candy Works, saying: I’m giving you this sugary thing, you put it in your mouth and it’s like sucking on someone’s body. Far from the Cuban artist’s sensual intention, Marilá considers it a point of environmental engagement, delivering with each ice lolly – the sugary thing – a paper napkin with a text about global warming, the prolongation of forest fire seasons, the resulting food insecurity, and even sea level rise.

Upon receiving the ice lolly, each participant receives a napkin in the same colour as the ice cream: orange, yellow, purple, red, saturated colours that are a hallmark of Dardot, who has organised libraries by colour and placed yellow flowers under purple ipê trees.

Seu tempo nas suas mãos is an ironic, almost surreal account, where it is possible to perceive, against the grain, the inequalities of the country. The turmoil, the delay of more than two hours in urban transport, contrasts with the fleeting twenty minutes by helicopter, complete with water, snacks, chocolate and a perfumed toiletry bag. The text, imbued with warm affection and economical sarcasm, has a Cortazarian accent. The memory of Los autonautas de la cosmopista resonates between Marilá’s sentences – the landscape, first seen from the train window and then contemplated from the air – the extended journey is mirrored in the contracted journey. Your time is in your hands, as long as you have enough money and space to land.

A daughter of conceptual art and Latin American conceptualism, Marilá has assembled libraries and amassed a collection of remade works: from Robert Smithson to Hélio Oiticica – the Duda Miranda collection. She read, pencil in hand, from Cortázar to Perec, played and still plays with words, her own and those of others, words she throws up in the air, collects, spins, dresses in intense colours, illuminates with gold and silver, prints on paper, paints. Always words. Essas perras negras, as Julio would say…

Maria Angélica Melendi