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A huge red crack running through the sugarcane landscape of a former sugar mill in Pernambuco caused a stir on social media in these first days of 2021.
Created by Pernambuco artist Juliana Notari, “Diva” is a land art of superlative proportions. Its 33 meters high, 16 wide and six deep, were carved and covered with reinforced concrete and resin painted in red tones to refer, at the same time, to a vulva and a wound.
In a post on social networks made last 30, the artist celebrates the delivery of the project, the result of an artistic residency at Usina de Arte, where the work is installed, and an agreement between Usina de Arte and Museo de Arte Moderna Aloisio Magalhães, Mamam, in Recife.
Notari’s selfies did not take long to record the process of the work to flood social networks, most of the time accompanied by criticism.
Of the published photos, one that draws attention is the one in which she, white, poses with the team responsible for the excavation, made up of black men, “the most sensitive issue pointed out by the public,” she acknowledges.
“The team and I were in harmony, but when you look at the picture, it really shows the class difference, racialization. I took the photo and in my whiteness I reaffirmed a work process typical of the Brazilian context ”, he says. “Could have been more careful. But I think you have to be careful when relating this to work. The image goes beyond the field of art and enters the context of what Brazil is ”.
The repercussions weren’t just racial and social. There were also those who called the work transphobic, genitalist, who questioned the need to spend money on feminist art and not on social projects, who were concerned about the environmental issue, etc.
Even in the face of the aggressiveness of the attacks, the artist believes that there is something positive in the discussion. “People also talk about the social relationship, gender, nature, the environment.”
Despite the fact that many people only pay attention to the giant vagina that sprouts from the ground, the artist reinforces that there is also a wound there. “If it was just the vulva, it would have made the lips big, the clitoris. It is also a wound. From the moment it appears, the field of interpretation of the work opens to other dimensions, such as the exploration of the land by capitalism ”, he says.
With the inauguration of “Diva”, the Usina de Arte artistic park, on the outskirts of Recife, expands its list of contemporary art works by authors such as José Spaniol, Joan Barrantes, Hugo França and Carlos Garaicoa.
Declared inspired by the Inhotim Institute, the project occupies an old sugar mill, bankrupt in the 1980s. “There are people who say there was deforestation [para a instalação da obra], but there was no longer virgin forest ”, says Notari. Another concern was the resin used: the artist says that the product had no contact with the ground. “Don’t these people have water tanks at home?”
At 46 he works with various artistic languages, performances, videos, photographs and drawings, in addition to installations. This is not the first time she has used the vagina as a subject. Nor is it his first controversy.
The female anatomy has been the basis of Pernambuco’s work since 2003, with the performance “Dra. Diva ”, presented at the Vermelho gallery, in São Paulo, and at the École Supérieure d’Art d’Aix-en-Provence, in France. In it, the artist opens cracks in the wall with the help of a hammer and scope, then bathes them with ox blood and inserts stainless steel specula into the openings.
Notari also used layers from a panel by Paulo Climachauska at the 26th São Paulo Biennial, in 2004, to create the “Ferida da Bienal”. In it, the prospecting process – also in the form of a slit – reveals an intense red color on the walls of the building that houses the artistic event, in different dimensions and outlines.
There was also the urban intervention “Spalt-me”, from 2009, in which the photography of the work “Dra. Diva ”occupied walls and walls of streets in Berlin, Venice, Amsterdam and Aix-en-Provence.
With “Mimoso”, from 2014, presented in “À Nordeste”, shown in 2019 at Sesc 24 de Maio, Notari had the first contact with the tension in social networks.
In the performance, she is dragged naked by a buffalo on the island of Marajó, in Pará, the animal was sterilized the day after filming and the artist incorporated the operation into the work. He ate the testicle the moment it was removed, with a knife and fork, and recorded it on video. The work caused controversy and Facebook took pictures of the work from the air. “It was very heavy,” he says. “But nothing like it is now. The thing went overboard. “
