Edifice Recife
22 framed triptychs (38 x 54 cm each), Inkjet on cotton paper, 2013
EDIFICE RECIFE identifies class relations embodied in the architecture and urban planning in the city of Recife, in the Northeast of Brazil, presenting photographs and texts that overview a new aesthetic prescribed by a developing economy. In Recife, an ideal of modernity was materialised by law in 1961 making mandatory the placement of three-dimensional artworks at the front of residential edifices to be constructed over 1,000 square meters, for what only local artists should be commissioned. From the 60’s to the 80’s, the authorship of these works - mostly sculptures - was linked to recognised artists of a modernist tradition. Since the 90’s, as private interest influences changes in this law for fast completion of real estate projects, building companies produce the artworks themselves. Usually positioned near to the security cabins of the condominiums, these pieces are subjected to continuous observation and conservation by the porters who guard these sites. In 2013, Wagner and de Búrca produced 66 photos of these sculptures and collected 66 accounts by the porters on the artworks they share their space with.
Artists' Bio:
The artists investigate how inherited aesthetic judgements differ across social classes in developing economies. Their collaborative practice utilises the relationship between documentary and art, making use of familiar narrative forms in order to ask fundamental questions related to the actual social and political value of art, who it is made for and why. Through interviews, surveys and collection of accepted forms of visual cultural production, they bring to an equal level of presentation diverse and contradictory elements of reality in order to destabilise embedded hierarchies, evincing questions of taste, tradition, race, class, belonging and status not immediately visible.