September 2022 AIR: Adriano Machado
We are excited to share the work of our September Artist in Residence - Adriano Machado
Learn more about their practice and how they use the landscape of Bahia, Brazil informs their practice.
Q & A
Q: HEY! SO EXCITED TO HAVE YOU AS OUR SEPTEMBER ARTIST IN RESIDENT! CAN YOU TELL US WHAT AFRO-BRAZILIAN ART AESTHETICS AND "GAMBIARRA" IS AND HOW YOU USE THAT METHOD TO CONSTRUCT YOUR IMAGES?
A lot of things have changed since I signed up for the residency and this temporal change made me see concepts that better organize my artistic practice. My work is based on a relationship of trust between myself and the personal territory where the image arises. Usually, that place is the backyard or the house of someone I have a connection with. Whether it's a relative or a person I've approached from a connection of memory and sympathy. I think that my construction process is related to looking at things and people, collecting fragments of memories and objects, and, from there, organizing images that are between reality and fantasy. These objects and things are from everyday life and banality, placed in a place of almost displacement: a tablecloth can become a blanket to discuss still-life painting. A signal strip can become a defensive instrument; animals can rearrange themselves between divinity and greatness.
Q: CAN YOU TALK ABOUT THE "RAWNESS" AND THE MATERIALS THAT YOU USE IN YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY AND HOW THAT INTERACTS WITH YOUR IMAGES.
When I used that word I thought of giving meaning to reality, but not putting life in that space where the material and the invisible are separated. I'm thinking about how the creative process is crossed by adversity. Life is always crossed by forces that we do not control, events and attitudes.
Q: HOW DOES THE LANDSCAPE OF BAHIA, BRAZIL INFORM YOUR PRACTICE?
The idea of landscape can be modified by the notion of territory and the life practices that take place here. The image of a green wall, poorly painted and a sunlight enchants me or an afternoon under a tree eating food made by those who love me. That's a landscape that comes to my mind right now.
Q: WELCOME TO CHICAGO! WHAT INTERESTS YOU ABOUT CHICAGO, AND WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO THE MOST ABOUT CHICAGO?
I'm interested in getting to know the artistic spaces, the artists, and especially the city's ways of life. I think it's important to be able to walk and dialogue with people to build images together.
Q: WHAT ARE SOME BOOKS, MUSIC, AND MOVIES THAT YOU ARE GROOVING ON RIGHT NOW? ANY RECOMMENDATIONS OF YOUR FAVORITES?
I'm reading Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism and I'm always reframing Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books.
Listening to Milton Nascimento & Baco Exú do Blues
ADRIANO MACHADO
I'm Adriano Machado, visual artist, invented in the portal of the Bahia hinterland. I believe that voices, colors and sounds should mix to invent images, and that they can be elements of transforming powers, even if slow. I work with social geography, the bodies that invent territory through their use; I investigate death, its systems as life poetics, in more detail, how Brazilian Afro-diasporic bodies are inserted in this process. In my artistic process I seek possibilities of creation in contemporary art through photography and 'graphic thinking'. I develop artistic projects looking for possibilities in photography to broaden voices and understandings about identity, territory, fiction and memory. With works that point to questions of the condition of man between living spaces and inventive Afro-Brazilian territories. Master student in Visual Arts from the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil.