19 January 2013

P/p - a solo show by Mariana Silva

A solo exhibition of artist Mariana Silva's work, curated by João Laia, is currently on show at The Mews Project Space at 15c Osborn Street, London E1.

The exhibition follows on from the screening at Whitechapel Gallery on Thursday 10 January 2013 of Silva's film, Une affaire de creux et de bosses (2011-), a visual treat accompanied by the olfactory experience of 'Parfum à la Guillotine' - a contemporary recreation (by Portuguese perfumer Lourenço Lucena's L'Parfumeur) of a perfume developed to counter the decrease in perfume sales during the French revolution. The exhibition - which expands on the ideas raised in Une affaire de creux et de bosses via a publication, a text and a video piece - runs through Saturday 9 February 2013.

As Laia explains eloquently in the press release:

'In the exhibition at the Mews Project Space the artist explores her interest in the concept of the public. Problematizing aspects of its porousness and vagueness, for example, in how it envelops contradictions between ideas of citizenship, conceptions of “public space", property and human rights notions of viewership and spectatorship.

The four prints that comprise the publication combine images taken from the same catalogue as those used in Une affaire de creux et de bosses with four excerpts from the writings on fashion by Flávio de Carvalho, published here for the first time in English after their original publication in the Brazilian periodical Diário de São Paulo in 1956.

The set expands the video screening Une affaire de creux et de bosses drawing a dialogue between the public/citizenship dialectic and a history of forms in fashion ... These associations extend to the video in which the artist uses de Carvalho’s reading of jewelry, such as necklaces, as incorporating the forms of slave chains, specifically a type of bangle still currently referred to as 'slave' in Portuguese (escrava) and Spanish (esclava). In the discrete loops of rotating gold and iron chains, appears also this afterimage of the colonial money used by the Portuguese, French and British in colonial trades ...

Also present in the exhibition, a text piece explores the friction between public and people, providing an entry point for and encapsulating the overarching discourse of the show. “P/p” continues Silva’s reflection on the idea of public, expanding her analysis of the body and the stage through the incorporation of topics related to appearance, style and consumerism.'

For more information see the Facebook event. The Mews Project Space is open Saturdays from 12-18h or by appointment. Be sure to check it out if you're in town!

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