The Painter (2017) is about the issue of gender in art (art market and history), specifically the predominance of the masculine. Based, for example, on the artwork "The advantages of being a female artist (1988/2017)" from Guerrila Girls, who exhibited at MASP in 2017 and approach the contrast between the small number of female artists compared to the large number of female nudes at the collection exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York (5% and 85% in 1989, 4% and 76% in 2012) and at MASP (6% and 60% in 2017).
In performance, the constant and repetitive act recalls a sexual act in its masculine version, symbolizing how culturally, the predominance of men in art (whether in the market or in history) continues to occur, the canvas is the symbolization of women artists and the white symbolizes an attempt to erase, along with the act that tears the screen, as a constant violation.

The Painter

The strangest characteristic of unconscious processes (...), is due to their complete disregard for the reality test; they equate the reality of thought with external reality and desires with its fulfillment - with the fact - just as it happens automatically under the domain of the old pleasure principle. Hence also the difficulty in distinguishing unconscious fantasies from memories that have become unconscious (Freud, 1911/1980: 285).

In art, mainly in a visceral, marginal, violent or body aesthetic that assumes its primitive characteristics, mainly using sexuality and nudity, outside the standard or pejorating this concept in order to contest colonization under the figure of the tribal body and its yearnings, specifically in performance art or in the image as photo-performance or video-performance we analyze not only a radical critique of one of the main characteristics of the religious and social fetish, but the construction and structuring of the body image.

Be sublime when you turn to art, creation or mystique, be abject when you surrender to your murderous drives, the wicked are a part of ourselves, a part of our humanity, because they exhibit what we never cease to disguise: our negativity itself, the dark part of ourselves. (Elisabeth Roudinesco, 2007, p13, The Obscure Part of Ourselves)

Based on the Lacanian point of view as Roudinesco delves into the book “The Obscure Part of Ourselves” and we also start from a philosophical presupposition, thus analyzing human nature such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Hobbes, among others, we can consider art as escape valve for perverse minds, and thus, the artistic act a kind of social theater that would be socially conceived.

However, art is reconciled with religious fetishism, specifically by objectifying and, in a way, worshiping the body image. The artist is the narcissist, whose presence is the vulnerability of the body that transitions between the banned / taboo of death, desire and transgression. “My body is the intention. My body is the event. My body is the result ”- Günter Brus


Necrophilia is then treated as questioning religious ethics and political ethics, the duality that exists between “the sacred and the profane, the divine and the human”. This perversity in conjunction with the social life of the necrophile under a judicial and social curation of the State, religiosity, specifically; monotheistic and eurocentrist religions - thus creating the optics and analogy of a Social Theater.

In current Brazilian legislation, despite advances in the field of organ donation and body donation for science, it does not give complete freedom for the individual to define the fate of his corpse in the post-mortem. The family, and the family's desire, are superior to the individual's own desire, since, even for the simplest things, such as organ donation, there is a need for family approval. That said, taking into account the corpse as a matter, the discussion of the dead body being owned by the individual's family, and not by the State.

This issue becomes complicated from the moment that religious freedom is a fundamental right, confirmed in the Federal Constitution. In other words, it is perfectly possible a situation in which there is no organ donation from an individual, who expressly expressed his desire, on behalf of a family, in which, due to religious principles, he did not allow the donation to take place. Thus, it is as if this individual is obliged to follow religious standards that he does not agree with.

It is possible to draw a parallel with the issue of necrophilia. In the Penal Code, the crime of "vilifying the corpse", which is when the honor of the corpse or his family is hurt. In this sense, if we are going to analyze the necrophilic practice as a villain, we can also analyze the situation described above as a villain. It is understood: if the practice of the necrophilic act, or even the plundering of the tombs is considered an act that hurts honor, why wouldn't it be against the principles of the individual before dying?

Perh

aps this parallel is easier to see when analyzing the opposite. Christians bury their dead aiming at the sacredness of the body, in the face of the resurrection of the flesh. Well, wouldn't a family who donated all the organs and then cremate an individual who had these principles not be seen as sacrilegious? Wouldn't it be hurting the honor of this corpse, since the honor also includes the intellectual attributes? What about the state that neglects lives?

What is transgression really?  

— The Body State - The Post Death Performance

When I was about 5 years old I started to have repeated visions of a family wearing gas masks. This image appeared specifically every time I looked down the hallway at my family home. The vision of the gas-masked family appeared to me coincidentally at the same time bad things were happening in my life. Therefore, I have always associated the family with gas masks image with negative feelings. So experiencing these visions was a very painful process. I frequently had nightmares with this family of my visions ended my peace of mind. When I was 23 years old I decided to transform this image of the gas-masked family into a staged photography. Once I had got the models for this photograph there was not doubt that I was going to given them a happy ending. I think that I had lived too long with the suffocating thoughts of this family with heavy masks and all the negative feelings associated with it. However, the turning point happened when I staged and photographed the “A Menina da Máscara de Gás (2012)” (The girl with a gas mask),shown above. By photographing the little girl with the mask I borrowed her presence to process and clean myself of all the bad feelings linked to the gas-masked family of my visions.

The sensation was exhilarating. I had the impression of removing the filter of my own imaginary gas mask and letting myself breath freely. I allowed myself to contaminate with the staged gas-masked girl and that allowed my to flourish to a new stage of my life even tough my surroundings remained chaotic. This photograph definitely freed myself forever from the gas-masked family hallucinations. I believe that by turning my vision into an object, in this case a photograph, allowed me to reprocess my past experience with the visions of the gas-masked people and consequently all hurtful feelings associated with it. Eloa is the little girl who worked as my model for the The girl with a gas mask. She worked as my mirrored imaged as she was about the same age I had when I started having the visions of a gas-masked family. I wanted to let Eloa know that she was a very important person in my life because she gave me her presence and gravitas so that together we were able to complete this catharsis.

Girl With The Gas Mask (2012)

The relationship between public spheres and the feminine and the marginalization of women’s sexual protagonism. Normality of advertising speeches that still treats the woman figure as a product, the art market that petrifies us as muses, religions that treats us as its servants and constant abuses, from the imposition of standards that escapes the ethnic and cultural context of our origin, to jargons co-created by the media that corroborates to the blamefully in legal and social treaties, even us as victims. The codes used are of universal communication and the aim of this project is to appropriate and corrupt.

The body transits between public and private. It explores the method in porno-graphical digital bases in order to tension the current culture values, exposing it. Everything is discussed on the Internet, transcending the geographical speech; borders, nationalism – behaviors are corrupted as they corrupted to strategically create its power devices – oppression and morality towards female sexuality.

The body as a representation of product being constantly deconstructed. It represents the abuses that are present in the advertising/systemic discursive tactics, consequentially in the stereotype of the social imagery. The body of women from underdeveloped countries – in this case an Ibero-American (the artist in question, latina) – used explicitly in a political-economic arena – that is, of how it’s distributed inside an organization.

Corrupted System (2017)

“Empowering and Feminist Workshop Made by Men Photographers” is part of a series of works that questions the manipulation of the feminine while image and object inside photography, specifically the sexuality and nudity of the portrayed woman. This performance is a critic to the sexual absuse in the photography scene and the appropriation of the feminine speach within projects, and so a deletion of the women professionals, besides the vunerability of the models. And as something cultural, as a teaching, that goes from one person to another, the performance is a “Workshop”.
 
The sentences spoken in the video are based in true facts. A research was carried out with artistic nude models and all of the sentences said did happen.

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HIFA CYBE