Martha Araújo — À propos — Slash Paris

Between 1982 and 1987 Martha Araújo produced a series of “performative objects” that the public was invited to wear. To fully understand the political dimension of these works one must bear in mind that they were designed and executed at a time of profound transformations of the way people understood socialization, methodically repressed by authoritarian political regimes in Latin America. But it is also important not to avoid a more intimate and perhaps even more complex approach related to a close connection with the “Other,” as a way to reaffirm our individuality and independence. In the artist’s own words, the action in the series Habito/Habitante brings about a “search for the achievement of utopia. An exercise in transcendence.” The act of freeing oneself, flying, and escaping from constraints is an action that is both extremely symbolically and physically significant. For Martha Araújo, the body is a mean of resistance, able to tell a story we cannot encapsulate in a monument.

Martha Araújo’s practice seems now crucial as it emerged in a very complicated moment in Brazilian history, just at the end of a long dictatorship and developed in the early years of a very young democracy. Her work reflects in a strong and poetic way the longing for liberty after decades of repression. From the more specific perspective of art history, Martha Araújo’s work is embedded in a line of development that is fundamental to the consolidation of Brazilian art in the latter half of the 20th century, of which artists such as Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark and Lygia Pape can be considered the founders.