by Moacir dos Anjos, this is the first exhibition in a sequence of exhibitions celebrating Nara Roesler's 50-year career as a gallerist, unfolding over the coming months across the institution’s three spaces in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and New York.
In Festival of Voices [Festa das Falas], the curator brings together emblematic works by artists who have influenced Nara Roesler's trajectory from 1976 to the present. Focusing on works by artists “who come from the same region as Nara, the Northeast, particularly Recife,” the curator, also born in the capital of Pernambuco, notes that “this exhibition seeks to recover a way of speaking, an inflection in this language, in this repertoire, of artists who, regardless of whether or not they bring visual references to a given territory, do so with a certain manner, an affirmation of belonging.” “In Nara’s speech, in Nara’s voice, there is this accent, just as there is in mine, and in the speech of other artists from this region.”
Alongside works from the gallery’s collection, the exhibition presents pieces from private collections, including the rarely seen, nearly eight-metre-long, two-metre-high ceramic panel Untitled (1976) by Francisco Brennand (June 11, 1927, Recife – December 19, 2019, Recife). The presence of works by José Cláudio (1932, Ipojuca, Pernambuco – 2023, Recife) is particularly significant, as he was the first artist with whom Nara Roesler worked, before opening her own gallery, and in 2022 was the subject of a retrospective exhibition curated by Aracy Amaral at Nara Roesler São Paulo.
A frequent visitor to contemporary art exhibitions long before dedicating himself to the field, Moacir dos Anjos first met Nara Roesler in the 1980s and later curated two exhibitions for the gallery. The first was in 2013, Cães Sem Plumas [Prólogo], presented as part of the 24th edition of Roesler Hotel, a project created in 2002 to foster dialogue between national and international artistic communities, inviting curators and artists to experiment within the gallery space in São Paulo. In 2016, Moacir dos Anjos curated Deriva, a solo exhibition by Cao Guimarães at Nara Roesler New York, and in the same space, in 2022, Hotel Solidão, a solo exhibition by Marcelo Silveira.
Regarding this exhibition at Nara Roesler São Paulo, Moacir dos Anjos states that “it is like a celebration of voices.” “We are gathered here listening to these artists, to their ways of being in the world. It is a way of celebrating this fiftieth anniversary of Nara’s activity as a gallerist by bringing together these voices, these forms of speech, these accents that were so important in her formation and remain so today, in the sense that this gallery has something that distinguishes it from others,” he emphasizes.
The curator recalls that 50 years ago, the art scene “was still very closed in on itself, highly endogenous.” “Artists often exhibited their work only in their own cities, in their own states, with rare incursions into other spaces, other territories,” he explains. “Today, artists circulate much more widely across different spaces in Brazil and abroad.”
