berna reale

Published in 1945, the poem “O Medo” [Fear] by Drummond, bears as an epigraph a phrase by Antonio Cândido – “Porque há para todos nós um problema sério (...). Este problema é o do medo” [Because there is a serious problem for all of us (…). This problem is that of fear” – an excerpt from a statement by the great intellectual made about the impact of World War II, about Nazi-fascism, and the repression of the Estado Novo. And since then the situation has become much worse. We live in a climate of civil war, as evidenced by the operation of the Armed Forces in Rio de Janeiro, our former post-card city, today a landscape of apprehension and sadness.

Berna Reale is deepening her investigation into violence, aware that it, among all the mothers of fear, is the greatest and most direct. Her performances, videos, photographs and installations have garnered her national and international recognition. All of this has taken place within the last decade, when the artist, indifferent to the celebration of Brazil as one of the BRICS, perceived that things were still just going along as always, that the seeds of violence, the serpent’s eggs, were splitting open, out of control.

Residing in Belém, a metropolis embedded in the wilderness, there, as in any other large Brazilian city, acts of savagery are committed daily: unnameable crimes against everyone, beginning with the children, along with bloody arguments, with insurrections and gunfights. Meanwhile, the innocents take pleasure in sharing images of violence through the social networks.

A forensic expert, the artist has viscerally witnessed the exponential naturalization of violence and, through the photographic series presented here, inquires into the reasons for this growth. Her answer: because there is pleasure in all of this, a pleasure that springs from the exercise of power by those who are armed, who for this reason begin to see others as simple objects, beings whose vital flames are being undermined, undermined until they go out.

The artist is now opening an exhibition – Sobremesa [Dessert] – consisting of seven photographic series and an installation, in which police officers, duly dressed, voraciously attack pieces of decorated cake, a party cake covered by thick layers of frosting. The uniforms of the police are, in accordance with the law, like those we see parading by on our streets, camouflaged. Do we need any clearer indication of a war now underway than this? The signs clash with one another. The eventual laughter brought on by the strangeness of the scene rapidly gives way to a question: what does this craving, this avid devouring refer to?

Berna affirms that it has something to do with the incessant inter-devouring between the social levels, the mutual cannibalism, splattered with blood, which includes the arrogance of those responsible for the societal order which, even from the height of their low rank do not hesitate to shoot amidst the communities, hitting the innocent; the voluptuous repression of the legion of the invalidated; the humiliating searches afflicted on the rabble, this class treated as though they were not people, and to which the greater part of them, the police, belong to.

The violence is diffuse, versatile and voracious, and stems from some who set themselves up as spokesmen of the divinities, the staff members of churches responsible for the compromising of childhood (Comida batizada) [Baptized Food]; it hits the little girls who are delivered to adult men (Comida caseira) [Homebaked Food]; it is in those who look at women like pieces of meat (Fome de lobo) [Wolf Hunger], in those that attack the transvestites, driven by hate, believing that they do not deserve to exist, to then rip out their hearts (Fome de Leão) [Lion Hunger].

Of special note are the two images that compose the series Comida de rua [Street Food]: three boys (men?), One white, one black, one mixed-race, dressed only in shorts, all of them facing the wall with their hands up, their backs turned, thus prevented from looking at the faces of those who are restraining them. One detail should not escape notice: each of their pairs of shorts is decorated with a design: the white boy with popcorn, the black boy with hot dogs, the mixed-race boy with French fries. Popcorn, hot dogs and French fries, three of the vulgar foods, cheap and fast, on which the disfavored feed. Three examples of the so-called junk food, perfect for quick satiation, as are also the boys who commit the crime of being poor, in the eyes of the law enforcement professionals who, with their swift raids, often repress them for the simple desire of relishing their sweet power.

Finally, in the last room, we come upon the installation Terra sem jejum [Land without Fasting], a grouping of six small caskets, destined for children, similar to a funeral parlor. Although the environment is grave and tragic, it has a touch of a cynical humor: the solemnity of the coffins is combined with the vibrant colors in the room, its ornamentation with candy, bonbons, cookies and confections, the delicacies of our childhood, part of it cowardly interrupted.