CASA 

Experiential Exhibition 

How to build a house across borders?  How to feel at home when you're away from home? 

CASA, the Brazilian word for house, shows us how Elissa de Brito, Fernanda Valdivieso, Júnia Matsuura and Mariana Bahia, our four Brazilian artists, built theirs: a place made with the safety of the love of friends - as Fernanda, in one fine night, wrote to us in an epiphany of poetry with a warm heart. 

CASA is in itself an epiphany. It is the safety of friends in migration, friends who crossed South to North, moving lines and reimagining spaces. At CASA, room by room, each of the artists' stories intertwine with silver and blue, driven by different approaches and threaded by lines, sound, lights, colours, movement, dance, poetry, performance readings and the power of acting upon living. In an admiration for each other's pathways, our artists have rounded up the gallery into what has become a house- even if temporary - of one's own. 

In such a case, even the temporality of this house is one with migration. Fernanda's inhabitance of CASA is summed as presence: temporarily or not, migrant bodies are inhabitants of the present, and each utensil, wall, framed-portraits, candles and flowers are 

proofs of presence with nothing (or little) to do with temporal tenses. Yet, Mariana's installation is one of tempo: in an atmosphere made of blue lights, shells and sound tells us memories of a long-loved house, kept and unknot. Just a few more steps away, Elissa's room is an invitation for movement, recalling memories, and the sensorial realm of embodied feelings; and Júnia's White Wall asks us questions we might not have asked ourselves before; or were too blind in white to think about the Other. Just alongside Júnias' room, rests the resident researcher Madár's space: a corner of quiet with coloured ribbons, materials so often used in Brazil's major festivals; a memory of home, turned into intentions for the passers-by. 

With the love of friends,

Elissa de Brito 

Fernanda Valdivieso 

Júnia Matsuura 

Mariana Bahia (Sifonics) 

and Madár