SARINA TANG

Introduction

TROPOSPHERE Shared Artists Brazil China features works of art created in this century by forty-two visual artists from Brazil and China, all making work related to nature, technology, or both. Brazil is the largest and most influential nation in South America, China the largest geopolitical and economic force in Asia.

In this book, visual artists from these countries—often also writers, musicians, and performers, and sensitive to current conditions—transmit their understanding of the issues in the world around us and entice us to look for solutions. Translated into aesthetically powerful messages, their perceptions of transformations in the ecology, and especially their concern over climate change, may inspire us to actively engage in initiatives to reverse the harm inflicted on nature.

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution two hundred years or so ago, technology has achieved unimaginable progress for humanity. Unbridled development, however, has had devastating consequences for the natural environment: the growing quantities of greenhouse gases in the troposphere, the burning of land and its vegetation, the release of pollutants into the air, vast amounts of plastic becoming non-degradable debris, oil spills in the oceans, industrial chemicals in rivers, mountains flattened by mining. Technological advances can and are being applied to improve the quality of air, to clean the oceans, and to provide alternative sources of energy that do not harm the environment.

In a global context, China, as part of Asia, and Brazil, south of the equator, have the largest concentration of outstanding individual artists. Innovation and inventiveness in both countries have been embraced and explored to great purpose and effect.

Historical and Modern Connections between China and Brazil

The renowned Portuguese-language writers José Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, João Guimarães Rosa, and others all wrote of and were influenced by Chinese culture and literature. Eça de Queiroz’s novella

O Mandarim [The Mandarin, 1880] and the eight poems
in Machado de Assis’s ‘Lira Chinesa’ [Chinese Lyre] index China in their very titles; Guimarães Rosa, in his story collection Tutaméia: terceiras estórias [Tutaméia: Third Stories, 1967], created a benevolent and ultimately heroic Chinese character, Yao Tsing-Lao, called Joaquim, and ventured into Chinese written symbols. Referencing the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, Guimarães Rosa studied the Chinese language, incorporating some elements in his own onomatopoeic style.

Portuguese trading fleets passed through China and parts of their cargos often ended up in Brazil. Many prized porcelain items, including entire dinner sets, were integrated into collections and passed on by inheritance through generations. The French Jesuit Charles Belleville, having spent a decade in China before living for twenty years, from 1710 to 1730, in Bahia, introduced Chinese motifs in several baroque churches and buildings, including the multiple figures of Christ with Chinese features housed in the chapel of Igreja da Ordem Terceira do Carmo, in Cachoeira (Bahia) [Fig. 1]. The Igreja Nossa Senhora do Ó, in Sabará, state of Minas Gerais, presents red lacquer panels depicting Chinese landscapes, pagodas, phoenix and dragons. The Nossa Senhora da Conceição, in the same city, Santa Rita, at Serro, and Rosário, at Milho Verde are part of a list of churches whose roofs are finished with swallow-wing tiles.

In the modern period, the artists Lin Fengmian and Walasse Ting both visited family members in Brazil multiple times
in the 1950s and 1960s. Zhang Daqian, born in Neijiang, Sichuan province, in 1899, emigrated to Brazil in 1954, settling in Mogi das Cruzes, a town about an hour from São Paulo. Expert in traditional Chinese landscape painting, he was skilled in copying masterpieces from the Song and Yuan dynasties (the 10th to 14th centuries). He perfected some of his techniques in three years of studying, cataloguing, and copying the wall paintings in the Buddhist caves around Dunhuang, in northwestern China.

TROPOSHERE SHARED ARTISTS BRAZIL CHINA

Marcos Galvão, Brazilian Ambassador of China

The year of 2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Brazil and China – a milestone that highlights the partnership between these two nations endowed with immense cultural and historical wealth. Over the course of five decades, Brazil and China have nurtured a strategic relationship in various fields. As is known, the main driving force to date has been the thriving exchange in the areas of trade and investment.

In this extraordinary book – Troposphere Shared Artists Brazil China – the dialogue between the two countries is literally seen in new colours: the rich palette of Brazilian and Chinese work of art. Exploring affinities and differences over the last few decades, it reveals the important role played by art in building new bridges between the two nations.

Brazil and China value their traditions and cultural heritage while embracing innovation and modernity. This book features works by Brazilians and Chinese that allow us not only to appreciate their diverse and boundary-breaking talent, but also to form a better understanding of the histories and contexts that shape these works.

Sarina Tang, the editor and author, invites us to explore and compare artistic approaches taken in Brazil and China. Through a visual and narrative journey, works that induce dialogue between the two cultures allow for a tangible perception of this rich interaction.

The troposphere, the atmospheric layer closest to the Earth’s surface and where most weather phenomena occur, serves as a metaphor for this space of creativity and artistic exchange: a dynamic place in constant transformation.

My special thanks go to Sarina Tang, who conceived and edited this project. She has been a partner of the Brazilian Embassy in China in other initiatives that have complemented the role she has long played, with enthusiasm, in promoting friendship between our two peoples in the field of the arts.

As we celebrate half a century of bilateral relations, we recognise that art should be an increasingly important way of bringing our societies closer together and strengthening an increasingly plural partnership between the two nations. Troposphere Shared Artists Brazil China is not just a collection of works: it is a living demonstration of art’s capacity to unite, inspire and bring people together.

Brazilian Artists

Adriana Varejão, Belo Horizonte

Adriana Varejão is likely the Brazilian artist most acknowledged internationally and highly regarded in Brazil, with major institutions frequently featuring her work. Aspects of ancient Chinese culture have been a major influence since the beginning of her career as an artist, and permeate much of her work.

Passion for and inspiration from China’s art and philosophy began at a young age, when she was studying at Parque Lage with Professor Charles Watson. He introduced her to the practice of Tai Chi Chuan and to the book by Eugen Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Archery. At the time, Varejão immersed herself in traditional Chinese medicine, studying acupuncture and other martial arts practices. Contemporaneously, as she began to paint, while researching Brazilian baroque churches, she was struck by the discovery of myriad ornamental details transmigrated from China, from the time Brazil was a Portuguese colony.

Arjan Martins, RIO de Janeiro

The first syllable of the artist’s name, ‘AR,’ is the word for ‘air’ in Portuguese while the second, ‘JAN,’ corresponds to the first syllable of the city he was born in. Having lost his father at age 2, Martins was raised by his mother. With no exposure to art while he attended the State Foundation for the Welfare of Minors (FEBEM), he experienced substantial deprivation throughout his youth. Arjan Martins relates to the pain and suffering amongst members of his community, and yet, it is their dignity which he chooses to portray.

Masterful brush strokes describing turbulent ocean and ships upside down deepens Martins’ investiture in his subject matter. Dense or subtle color arouses the ardent temperature of his narrative. Visually, his narrative is powerful, rendered yet more so, as he infuses it with writings of ‘thinkers’ reinforcing theories addressing race, such as Brazilians Abdias Nascimento and Lélia Gonzalez, African American poet Derek Walcott and Caribbean/French writer Éduoard Glissant. It is perhaps the interpretation of the philosophical and intellectual heritage of his race infusing Arjan Martin’s work which makes it profoundly compelling.

Darks Miranda, Fortaleza

Darks Miranda occupies the interstitial space between nature and science fiction. Her innovative approach in performance, installation and video or film employs a new form of storytelling. Imagery from horror and science fiction movies effectively comment on Brazilian cultural history, in a fresh dynamic.

Her project ‘Celularrr’ created for the Instituto Moreira Salles exhibition in 2020 is almost didactic in its perspective, exploring the most life-transforming device in this era. Her own performance within a spectacular plant life installation, interspersed with narrative, efficiently conveys the message and is aesthetically intriguing. In her film Uma noite perigosa na Ilha de Vulcano, she appropriates images from NASA film archives and science fiction movies, reinterpreting volcanic eruption and seismic events in epic proportion.

Darks Miranda’s fanciful, humorous sculpture installations render ordinary objects extraordinary, communicating sparkling unprocessed messages of concern for the environment. Her work speaks to millennials, and those used to the language of computer games, nonlinear narrative, and a new generation of film directors.

Luana Vitra, Belo Horizonte

Luana Vitra confronts the vast scale of industrial mining with works that are scaled to the human body. Her sculptures
and installations consider the physical, cultural, symbolic and spiritual properties of each material she uses, as if, by rearranging the relationships between things, the artist was able to underscore complex layers of knowledge, sentiment and meaning normally silenced by the mercantile exploitation of such materials.

Vitra is a visual artist, dancer and performer. Familiar with the effects of activities undertaken by mining and construction companies and monoculture within the landscape of her home state, she creates work that equates other ways of being with nature and its elements. To this end, she engages with Afro-diasporic knowledges introduced to her within a familial context; conducts research and travels for purposes of investigation; deepens her connection with religious traditions and, above all, experiences a bodily deployment of metals, minerals and rocks.

Chinese Artists

Chi Peng, Yantai

Imaginative creations included videos of miniature airplanes flying through corridors in a building, chased by his own naked body. Openly gay, his photography depicted highly sexualized auto-erotic scenes, in telephone booths and other public locations. Photoshopped ‘Journey to the West’ Peking Opera costumed monkey figure in spectacular ancient architectural settings was widely exhibited, in China and abroad. This was inspired by memories of his childhood favorite TV series of the mischievous ‘Monkey King’ performing heroic deeds.

Work by Chi Peng has been featured in venues across the United States, including at The Orange County Museum
of Art, Tampa Museum, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the Center (New York), Meridian International Center (Washington DC) and Slought Foundation (Philadelphia). Traveling exhibitions include cities such as Karlsruhe, Barcelona, Cambridge, and Toronto, and institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Piazza (Brussels), and Nordjyllands Kunstmuseum (Aalborg).

Liang Yuanwei, Shaanxi

Known for her paintings depicting flowers and leaves, a common classical Chinese art subject, Liang Yuanwei draws inspiration from ancient techniques to painstakingly render each flower, petal or leaf in order to achieve an extraordinary effect on her canvases. She incorporates techniques acquired during her research in the Song and Tang Dynasty’s classical frescos as well as those of the Italian Renaissance. Thus she learned to apply the delicate contour line (xian) used in the murals found in Shaanxi Province and housed in the History Museum in X’ian, the former capital of the empire

In Liang Yuanwei’s work, the precision with which she applies different thickness of paint in a single stroke is impressive. Different pressures on the brush determine the depth of the petals and thus, further enhance the contour of the impasto. Repeating the same method, but not the brushstroke, the artist depicts the next element until completion of the colorful pattern, whereby flowers seem to flutter.