e x t r a s p a z i o gallery presents Barbara Wagner, “Brasilia Teimosa“, from may 22 to july 24
Bárbara Wagner, Untitled, from the series Brasilia Teimosa, 2005, Durst print between perspex and aluminium, cm 50 x 75, courtesy: e x t r a s p a z i o, Rome
e x t r a s p a z i o presents the first Italian exhibition by the young Brazilian photographer Barbara Wagner (born Brasilia, 1980). The artist will be showing the photographic series Brasília Teimosa (2005-06) which was recently hosted by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London.
The photographs were taken in 2005 and 2006 in the suburbs of Recife, on Brasília Teimosa beach, where shanty town dwellers gather on Sundays with their friends and families.
Barbara Wagner’s shots distance themselves from a documentary style, although she asks her subjects to strike a pose for the camera and uses a flash to emphasise the studio experience. Reality and artifice are intertwined: the artist catches in her subjects the poses and the pop language of tv fictions and commercial music. Her photographs are “lies that dare to tell the truth”.
Sound ambience by DJ Dolores, aka Helder Aragào (Recife)
Catalogue available
From May 22 to July 24
monday-friday 15.30-19.30
Barbara Wagner was born in Brasília in 1980; lives and works in Recife. She studied journalism and photography and currently works as a freelance photographer. For the Brasília Teimosa photographic series she received a grant from the Foundation for the historical and artistic heritage of the state of Pernambuco.
Solo exhibitions: Brasília Teimosa, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, 2008; Brasília Teimosa, Caixa Cultural, Brasília, 2008 / Rio de Janeiro, 2007-2008 / São Paulo, 2007; Brasília Teimosa, Malakoff Tower, Recife, 2006.
Introductory text by Giuliano Sergio:
“My first Barbara Wagner photo was sent from Brazil by a friend. It shows a family at the seaside, shot against the background of a blue sky: the expressions and glances of the group throw down a mischievous challenge, all flaunting irreverent poses that are accentuated by bright colours and the light of the flashbulb. My first impression was ambiguous, as if that family, in putting on a show, were actually revealing themselves to my eyes. I subsequently discovered that all Barbara Wagner’s photographs create the same subtle play made up of provocation and self-irony.
The series is part of a documentary work about Brasília Teimosa, a poor quarter in Recife which since the 1950’s has opposed various attempts at evacuation by the municipality.
Recent upgrading of the area has transformed the beach into a new meeting place for the working classes from all over the city. In the artist’s images the seafront becomes a stage on which the people of Recife put themselves on show in a ritual that celebrates a day off amid sounds, drinks and beach umbrellas. Looking at the photos we want to meet Fábio, Eliana, old João and the others on the beach at Buraco de Veia, to run into those faces and hear that music, to rediscover the alchemy created between photographer and bathers. Barbara Wagner tells how her experience in advertising and photojournalism provided her with the key to build up a new documentary approach. The limitless and ingenuous hedonism of Brasília Teimosa folk reveals a sensuality normally extraneous to photographic works of this kind. The artist uses advertising language as a tool for documentation, neutralising by excess any reference to the collective imagination of the mass media. The shots thus man!
age to
penetrate a truer reality, unveiling a vitality often neglected in the anonymity of contemporary society. This willingness on Barbara’s part induces men and women to step on stage before her lens: the pose becomes an occasion for a collective and self-ironic performance, a pretend television frame in which the bathers display and exorcise the stereotypes of their own collective imagination. Hence that unusual “naturalness” of the subjects, that fun challenge which, far beyond the myths offered by mass culture, reveals the character of a community”.
- Giuliano Sergio -
(Art critic and historian, he has curated exhibitions and collaborated with institutions such as the MAXXI and the National Graphics Institute in Rome. He teaches History of Photography and Videoart at the University of Paris VII)
e x t r a s p a z i o
via San Francesco di Sales 16/a
I - 00165 Roma
tel / fax +39 06 68210655
info@extraspazio.it
www.extraspazio.it