TAMAR GUIMARAES AND KASPER AKHOJ'S FOTONOVELA 'THE LAST DAYS OF WATTEAU' AT FORTES VILACA, SAO PAULO

Tamar Guimarães and Kasper Akhøj  

The last days of Watteau 

Tamar Guimarães works with film, sound and installations, and often incorporates material found where she researches such as photos, texts, documents and objects. The reprocessing of this raw material produces narratives of a hybrid nature between documentary, essay and fiction.

The last days of Watteau is a fotonovela for slide projectors with synchronized sound made in collaboration with the Danish artist Kasper Akhøj. The work was initially produced for the Jeu De Paume Satellite Program.

The reference to Watteau arises from an anecdote about the site of the Maison d’Art Bernard Anthonioz in Nogent-sur-Marne, France, where the project was originally installed. While researching the context of the Maison, the artist’s attention was drawn to the fact that the house had been listed as a historical monument, in the last century, because of a dossier of false evidence produced by its former owners, claiming that Antoine Watteau – the creator of the “fête galantes” genre – had spent his last days and died there. This factoid with historical repercussions was the starting point for the work.

Guimarães and Akhøj staged a party where the guests included their hosts – the team of the Maison d’Art and the Jeu de Paume, as well as artists, curators and friends from Paris and beyond. The project entailed a scenic experiment where the party guests interacted with a small cast of actors in improvised as well as pre-rehearsed acts. The slide fotonovela is the result of this theatrical experiment. In this aspect the project is related to Tamar’s Canoas [Canoes, 2010], which was produced in a similar way.

The work is not a reconstruction of historical facts but rather a reflection on the historical residuum of these facts. Besides the reference to Watteau, the artists allude to other rumors that surround the Maison, such as the original transcript of Joan of Arc’s trial, which had perhaps belonged to the collection of rare manuscripts of the house and which was supposedly taken away during the war and never returned, as well as to a collection of false African masks left as a legacy by a former resident of the Maison after it had become a home for elderly artists. These three references (Watteau’s death bed, Joan of Arc’s trial transcript, and a collection of fake masks) make up the backdrop for the fotonovela over which the party guests and actors interact.

Tamar Guimarães was born in Belo Horizonte in 1967 and lives and works in Copenhagen. Besides the recent exhibition at the Maison D’art Bernard Anthonioz/Jeu de Palme Satellite Program in 2012, the artist has held solo shows at Gasworks, London, UK (2011), and the IMA Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2009). She has participated in various important group shows, most notably the Panorama de Arte Brasileira do MAM São Paulo (2009), the Bienal de São Paulo (2010) and Gwangju Bienial (2008). Her work figures in the collections of Inhotim, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; Frac Lorraine, France; Guandong Museum, Guangzhou, China; and CIFO, Miami, USA. 

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