Galeria Nara Roesler | New York is pleased to present While You Laugh/Enquanto você ri, an exhibition of recent photographs and videos by Berna Reale, curated by Claudia Calirman. In her performances and installations, Reale engages either her own body or those of willing participants to reflect on the contemporary sociopolitical moment. She is particularly interested in the violence that permeates Brazil and seeks to urge viewers to confront this in the public sphere. In this, the artist’s New York debut, Reale presents Bi, a character she portrays in a head-to-toe pink bodysuit with enlarged foam breasts and testicles.
Claudia Calirman writes: “Through her carefully constructed non-binary character “Bi,” Reale challenges prejudice and discrimination. Addressing underprivileged and marginalized victims of the violence permeated in daily life, be it physical or psychological, Bi depicts society’s systematic exclusion of the already excluded. Reale’s work is forceful, raw, and blunt, as she exposes in playful but radical ways diverse forms of the injustices inflicted by savage capitalism, police brutality, militias, and hate crimes.”
