Oxygen Art Centre is delighted to present the group exhibition, The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) guest curated by Rodrigo D’Alcântara (Brazil/Canada) featuring international artists Bento Leite (Brazil), Dyó Potyguara (Brazil), and Simon(e) Jakiriuma Paetau (Germany/Colombia).
Guest curator Rodrigo D’Alcântara conceived of the exhibition as a response to the global pandemic alongside the very state of collapse and acute uncertainties of life caused by the current neo-colonial system. D’Alcântara’s curatorial practice focuses on Brazilian contemporary art and Latin American futurisms and continues this research as a doctoral candidate at Concordia University (Montréal, Canada).
The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) as a concept and exhibition title draws on spiritual implications of the pandemic. It directly alludes to an Indigenous Brazilian Guarani-Nhadeva cosmology that foresaw an invisible smoke arriving to take people’s lives. At once concerning the material and ephemeral, The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta) looks to repetitions of systemic colonial violence on bodies, the land, and our communities to contend with the present towards alternative futurities.
Prior to the exhibition, Oxygen Art Centre will host the curator and artists on the tum xula7xw of the sn̓ʕay̓ckstx, otherwise known as Nelson, B.C., for a three-week residency program from November 13, 2023, to November 30, 2023. The residency creates space for the group to engage with exhibition thematic and to work collaboratively on new process-based pieces that will be presented alongside existing multimedia and two-dimensional artworks in the exhibition.
The public will be invited to a series of adjunct programming and events to meet with the artists and learn more about their practices.
With this premise, curator Rodrigo D’Alcântara (Brazil/Canada) and international artists Bento Leite (Brazil), Dyó Potyguara (Brazil), and Simon(e) Jakiriuma Paetau (Germany/Colombia) will be immersed at the Oxygen Art Centre from 13 to 30 November 2023 producing works related to the tensions between spiritual, urban, natural, and territorial spheres in Nelson, BC.
The exhibition will be on view from December 1, 2023, to February 3, 2024. Oxygen Art Centre will be open Wednesdays to Saturdays from 1:00 to 5:00 PM throughout the exhibition run.
Exhibition didactics will be available in both Portuguese and English, translated by Lara Bourdin (Montréal, Canada). Promotional materials feature design by Keiko Lee-Hem (Nelson, Canada). An exhibition catalogue including documentation, curatorial texts and art writing responding to the project will be available shortly following the exhibition close.
This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Columbia Kootenay Cultural Alliance, and the Regional District of Central Kootenay.
Image Credit: Mourning Stage, Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau and Carlos Motta, Experimental video short film still, 2022
Program Details:
The Hungry Mist (A Névoa Faminta)
Group exhibition
Curated by Rodrigo D’Alcântara
Artists: Bento Leite, Dyó Potyguara, Simon(e) Pateau
Residency: 13 – 30 November 2023
Exhibition: 1 December 2023 – 3 February 2024
Curator Biography:
Rodrigo de Alcântara Barros Bueno is a visual artist, film/video-maker and PhD student in the Interuniversity Doctoral Program in Art History at Concordia University (Montreal, CA). His doctoral studies are supported by Concordia University Graduate Fellowship and Concordia International Tuition Award of Excellence. He holds a Master degree in Visual Arts from the School of Fine Arts of Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and a Bachelor degree in Plastic Arts from the University of Brasília (Brazil) – with an exchange term in the Los Andes University (Colombia). Rodrigo’s works have been screened internationally, in countries such as Austria, Brazil, Belgium, Chile, Germany, Greece, Italy, among others.
Artist Biographies:
Bento Ben Leite was born in Fortaleza, Brazil, in 1990. He lives and works in Fortaleza and is represented by Alfinete Galeria and A Pilastra Galeria, both in Brasilia, DF. With a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from Universidade de Brasília, Bento focuses his studies on painting, engraving, drawing, and cinema. His collages are what guide his creative process, addressing subjects such as violence, conflict, daily life, love, questions about gender and sexuality, and the strength of the TLGBQI+ family. Music shows up in his works as the soundtrack of metaphorical fictional images. It may be surprising to see his painting series including movie names, music albums, blogs, and memes of Ceará’s drag queen reality show. Furthermore, he proposes links between composition texts and acclaimed pop culture images. Bento has participated in multiple solo and collective shows throughout the Brazilian territory and was a nominee at the PIPA Prize 2019 and 2020 editions.
Dyó Potyguara is Rastros de Diógenes (Brasil, 1994) a proposer of performances, poetry, and pedagogical interventions in which she intersects ecologies, memory, presence, and virtuality. She has collaborated with collectives and institutions, taking part in exhibitions, residencies, publications, and festivals throughout Abya Yala and Europe, such as Campo, Capacete, Casa Mata, Acciones al Margen, Transweb, Ehcho, MEXE International Art and Community Festival, and Schwules Museum. She is part of the Ocultas collective and works with the Terreiro Afetivo laboratory of artistic and ecological practices, selected by Campo’s Várzea research grant. Most recently, she has been selected as a resident at Pivô Pesquisa 2023 (São Paulo, Brazil).
Simon(e) Jaikiriuma Paetau is a German-Colombian interdisciplinary artist. Their works are located between cinema, video installations, and performance, dealing with queer decoloniality. Simon(e) studied Media Art at the KHM Cologne and Film at the EICTV Cuba. Simon(e)’s films have premiered at Cannes Directors Fortnight, BFI London, New York Film Festival, documenta14, New Directors/New Films MoMa, and Rotterdam, and won, among others, the Emerging Talent Award at kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 2022, the Norman Award 2022, the Best Director Award at the Cartagena de Indias International Film Festival Colombia 2018, and a nomination for the Queer Palm at Cannes 2022. Simon(e)’s performances and installations have premiered at Wexner Center of the Arts, Berlinische Galerie – Museum of Modern Art, HKW, Monitoring Kasseler Dokfest, Studio Я of Maxim Gorki Theater, Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, Hebbel am Ufer, Cinemateca de Bogotá, as well as the 11th Berlin.
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