Lenora de Barros

Umas e Outras (Some and Others)

On March 29th, Pivô presents Umas e Outras, a solo exhibition by Lenora de Barros in which the artist displays 65 newspaper columns from the 1990s, as well as two brand new black and white videos – Jogo de Damas and Em si as mesmas – and an audio intervention, titled Duplicar Imagens.
From 1993 to 1996, Lenora de Barros authored an experimental column, published Saturdays in the São Paulo newspaper Jornal da Tarde under the title of … umas. This space gave birth to ideas and works which transformed into autonomous videos and photo-performances in subsequent years. After showing 13 of these columns in a display window at the 11th Biennale de Lyon, in France in 2011, the artist decided to frame and exhibit a larger set, taken from her personal archives.
In these columns , Lenora dialogued with works by various artists, in addition to other experiments. She later made a selection of these “conversations” involving women’s themes or works by artists like Lygia Clark, Yoko Ono, Cindy Sherman, Annette Messager and Méret Oppenheim. This selection yielded a book titled Jogo de Damas – Crítica de Arte – Livro Primeiro. The book, still unpublished, was the starting point for the two exhibited videos, directed by David Pacheco.
In Jogo de Damas the eponymous book serves as a guide to reading vocal performances realized by Lenora and was conceived in tryptic format for simultaneous projection. Em si as mesmas for its part, has a title that stems from one column in which Lenora comments on a photo from 1925, by an unknown author, of two siamese twins, the Hilton sisters. It was produced for double projection, on two opposite walls. In it, Lenora plays checkers with herself. On one screen, she moves the white checkers and on the other, the black ones, in a kind of “infinite game, with no winner and no loser,” in the artist’s words.

Lenora filmed the new videos in the Pivô space and the exhibition, which was curated by Glória Ferreira and previously presented at Centro Cultural Laura Alvim in Rio de Janeiro, is now on display in the same space in which it was produced.

The exhibition Umas e Outras by Lenora de Barros is realized in partnership with Galeria Milan.