Cathedral is the title of the most impressive work of art that will be seen in Spain this fall. Probably, sure. Catedral (1902-2003) is a set of ribbons made of leather and human hair that, joined together, measure 100 meters long and snake along the floor of the main room of the Botín Center in Santander until they rise high, collected by the halter of a horse. What seems like chaos becomes structure and elevation. The title of Cathedral is almost a joke and alludes to the resemblance of that collection to Niemeyer's Brasilia Cathedral. And mentioning ribbon hair is not a manner of speaking. Solange Pessoa, the author of Cathedral, collected hair for 10 years. First his own, then those of his friends and, in the end, those that were given to him at hair salons, until he created his piece.
Pessoa is a Brazilian artist, a sculptor who also paints and makes installations, who has been working since the 80s and who in 2022 dazzled at the Venice Art Biennale and launched her career in Europe and the United States. Today he will open his first exhibition in Spain at the Botín Center, Del día o de la noche, a set of seven large installations that go from the dark to the luminous, from the delicate to the overwhelming, from the historical to the animal and from precious metals to baked earth. They go from one extreme to another because Pessoa's idea of the world maintains that opposites do not contradict each other but rather explain each other.
"Day or night is a phrase from San Juan De La Cruz," the artist explained yesterday in Santander. And the reference to the Spanish poet is a good thread to start pulling. Pessoa said that he is not interested in themes in art but that he does like to talk about presences that are in his memory and in his work. For example, the baroque art of his state, Minas Gerais, the art that the Portuguese and the Spanish brought to the interior of Brazil and that an artist named Antônio Francisco Lisboa elevated to the sublime, Aleijadinho (El Lisiadito). He was a mulatto who mixed Christian imagery with pre-Iberian art and who, for centuries, was considered an abject, grotesque creator. Today, it is the clearest reference in Pessoa's work.
The baroque, said the artist, resonates in the hair of the Cathedral, because the devotional figures of her region were full of hair. But there is also baroque in the bronze marbles of another work, Origo, the installation that occupies that wonderful corner of the Botín Foundation that floats above the sea. In Origo (created for this exhibition) the blinding light is reflected in the bronze but is absorbed by other clay balls that complete the work. From one extreme to the other, once again.
Clay, leather, bronze, hair... Solange Pessoa explains herself, first of all, through the texture of her works, according to the curator of Del día o de la noche, Bárbara Rodríguez Muñoz. "Solange is, above all, a material artist." The material also unites Pessoa's work with his territory. Minas Gerais, as its name reveals, was a mining state. Rich first, then poor and always brutal. «Mining is over and we switched to the agricultural industry. We replaced one monoculture with another. The exploitation of the soil is heavy, invasive," said Pessoa in Santander.
Minas Gerais was also a territory of frontier and conquest, and this is evident in a presence that runs through day or night: horses, a classic symbol of passion in the History of Art. It has already been noted: the Cathedral ribbons are collected in a halter. Next to it is another piece, a video titled Cavalos that was first a performance. In it, Pessoa hooded some horses with covers made of human hair. Along with the film of that action, the Santander exhibition shows the hoods used in the Cornelius series. Even more impressive is Arreios, a set of leather pieces that resemble horse saddles. The image is dark, almost sexual. According to Pessoa, it is a way of representing by omission the riders, their idealism and their violence, which is also part of the history of Minas Gerais.
-Does he get along well with horses?
-Yeah. I have ridden. They have been in my life.
