Brazilian Wax is the result of the artistic residency EMERGE Carnaval de Torres Vedras 100 anos, conceived and produced by EMERGE, which invited Gustavo von Ha (a Brazilian artist not living in Portugal) to create visual and performative works, regarding the city’s carnival background; and João Silvério for the curatorship of the residency and the exhibition. We can understand from the outset that “this project is collective: the artist, the production and curatorial structure”¹. The artist presents two key pieces from his studio – a smaller copy of Michelangelo’s Pietá and a phallic mould similar to a clay bottle, recalling Bolsonaro’s ridiculous and defamatory words about the opposition in a recent and tragic past for Brazil. Although these elements are clues that, according to the curator, represent three essential lines of the project’s structure – “relating themes with the European cultural heritage, the models established by the power structures and subject to popular criticism, and the derisive and even amusing irony that associates the vernacular and popular culture with gender and identity issues”¹-, the artist did not create a conceptual strategy for Torres Vedras, stating that “the discourse and the work are born together – it is almost as if they were (…) body and soul”².

The first decision was not to make an obvious and topical comment on Carnival – “I arrived when the city was already being transformed (…) and I thought of not talking about Carnival, because it would be too literal. I pondered the structures and strategies of this universe, which are on the inner side, to produce work according to my artistic strategies and limitations (…). To have a Brazilian talking about Carnival would be somewhat hollow and, in my work, I always like to make room for ambiguity, as autonomy is necessary to function”².

Two important points in this opening: are the artist’s political nature and the difference between the Brazilian Carnival and the Carnival of Torres Vedras, as well as between cultures, geographies, realities and fiction. The first is decisive in von Ha’s journey; for the artist, seeing, thinking and creating are political actions – “Here again is the primordial question: what are the limits? What is art? What is not? What is the artist’s role? I always ask this question: what exactly is my intervention? It’s always political, because everything we do collectively is political – the interference in the polis, in the city, is pure politics (…).This is an inherent question in my work, which is entirely political, despite being something a bit hallucinatory, fun and even a meme.”² This is visible in the layers of meanings and materializations, and also in the methodologies used, associated with anthropology and sociology, besides mixing currents from art history and current media. This recalls Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the work of art in the age of technical reproducibility, but now in the digital era.

The working process started with historical research at Centro de Artes e Criatividade de Torres Vedras to develop the concept of an imaginary museum anticipated by Pietá’s graffiti copy. Simultaneously there was field research, fully immersing in the city, and observing the Carnival’s birth and the discovery of the city’s graffiti surfaces. They were mapped by the artist and transposed to embroidery, paintings and in neon that reminds us of Pop Art. These options go beyond the frontiers of art and reveal a trademark of his – or the subversion of it -, on bodies and walls. Along the first line, the binomial exhibition/occultation is emphasized, as well as the inversion or revelation of identity during Carnival, as a pagan event of excesses and exception. Using the words of João Silvério, a “moment in which it is urgent to be other of oneself”¹.

Then comes the second point mentioned above – “I started (…) to observe the people, the clothes, (…) and I noticed a pattern in colours and textures; and this allowed me to fit my Brazilian Carnival with the Carnival over here. The first thing is the relationship with the skins”². In Brazil, because it’s summer, bodies are almost naked and adorned – similar to the indigenous people who inspired this celebration -; in Torres Vedras, it’s winter and, to uphold the slogan ‘Portugal’s most Portuguese Carnival’, the music is mostly Brazilian, but there’s no Brazilianness and the skin (exposed there) over here is covered by other animal-imitating skins, in a sort of camouflage. Moreover, the artist noted that this relationship with skin goes beyond Carnival and marks (sometimes surreptitiously) society’s everyday life – “I started to combine all this information (…) about the layers of skins, the skins that occupy the city, that occupy us, the skins we inhabit, what we want to show and hide”². The curator’s words, aligned with Von Ha’s conceptual and artistic strategies, reinforce this idea – “The body is a political territory with changes and transitions before the Other. The body is the place where celebration and camouflage are affirmed”¹.

An unexpected meeting with two deeply tattooed individuals from Torres Vedras – Ana Rafaela Duarte and Milton Faria – gave origin to the video where they cover their tattoos with make-up. According to the artist, this enabled him to connect everything and conceptually settle the project. This video-performance embraces not only the question of the inversion of an identity mark swinging between occultation and revelation, but also an artistic strategy of Von Ha: to become a co-author of his work by including the community. The leftover make-up made it possible to paint fake jaguar and zebra skins. Some with a camouflage pattern – La Danse stands out, alluding to Matisse’s painting; others generating a camouflage similar to human skin. Later, we learn that this foundation is Von Honey – a cosmetic that only exists in a showcase of the exhibition, in a bus ad and in the imagination (and desire) of those who see it, having several functions, also serving to clean the house. This irony and deconstruction of standardised social behaviour is all over the exhibition and is visible in the abrasiveness of the title Brazilian Wax – the depilation exported from Brazil and franchised in the USA – whose wax is used in some works.

The environment of the two exhibition rooms, crowded with materials, techniques and references could fit Nietzsche’s ‘Apollonian/Dionysian’ dichotomy to explain the birth of a work of art. The Dionysian excess provided by the works aforementioned and the subversion of the venue with the painting of a room in green Chroma Key – the room is transformed into a film set and the visitor becomes a co-author by using the Instagram Chroma-Ha effect -, are contrasted with the stripped down, ritualistic aspect, in an almost ironic sacralization, of the black monolith inspired by Stanley Kubrick, and the two phallic bottles (reminiscent of saints) – one in bronze and the other in ceramic with motifs of Portuguese tiles. These are surrounded by a kind of baroque frames loaded with meanings (one associated with Brazil, which we have already mentioned, and the other recalling ceramics produced in Caldas da Rainha). The monolith also has Von Ha’s meaning ambiguity, “with an innuendo on that environment, and on what it may become (…) from its black monolith. When we pick it up and see the application, they are two monoliths talking and creating another world”², echoing at the same time the existential paradox of the object (and of life on Earth).

The project’s collaborative nature, the different layers, meanings and reminiscences/rebirths, and the creative and interpretive freedom offered to the visitor/participant, without disturbing the internal logic of the conceptual structure, transform Brazilian Wax into an open work. The artistic residence “will echo for a long time, because it has had a great impact”² on the artist’s output. Evidence of this is the presence of the cosmetic ad for Von Honey (with Carol Marra), to be published in Umbigo #84.

Brazilian Wax is at Casa Azul of EMERGE until April 1 and will have a guided tour by the curator on the 25th, at 4:30 pm.

(1) Silvério, João. (2023). ocultação e chromaqui: como se fosse uma máscara (curatorial text);

(2) Conversation with Gustavo von Ha at Casa Azul, March 11, 202