Um corpo no mundo, by Juliana Matsumura
My story
is a different one
and it begins now
I’m always
beginning
(Adília Lopes)
03.01.2025. Only three days had passed since the beginning of the year, a time filled with endless expectations and pledges of a fresh start that was far too slow in arriving. It has now been 5 days since Adília Lopes died. And ten years since Dobra‘s first edition, where I read this poem for the first time. I thought of these words while visiting Juliana Matsumura’s exhibition Um corpo no Mundo. Now I recall them with the conviction that few reflect so evidently the nature of the body in the world: the continuous movement of beginnings; the absence of final points that signal an absolute end.
Resulting from the artist’s artistic residency in São Paulo, at FAAP – and during a residency at Aderno Associação Cultural, in Portugal -, Um corpo no Mundo is a historical and autobiographical reflection on Japanese immigration to Brazil. Between the earthy colors and organic materials, there are traces of this historical background in their domestic rituals. Familiar objects, codes and references are gathered and, between the lines, an answer is also offered to the question “What is a body in the world?”.
Most of the works on display are self-referential maps, with writings and photographs transferred through drawing. Having been added to her work as a visual element for the first time, the writing on the maps is in itself a symbolic gesture. It involves the artist inscribing herself in the communal territory, in other words, marking her existence in time and space. Similarly to On Kawara, in the series I Got Up and I Am Still Alive, Juliana Matsumura attempts to find her place in the world through writing. After all, to be in the world is to write and map, even if maps are nothing more than a visual record of subjective experience. It means demanding a place for oneself – among the wind routes, the sea currents and the ceaseless rivers.
These maps are hung on the walls of the gallery and are structured around two central pieces. Kokoro I is a set of five metal pieces laid on small cotton cushions and a wooden stick. This piece is a reworking of a Butsudan, a Buddhist shrine in Japanese homes that honours Buddha and departed family members. This tribute actually has a two-fold aspect. Firstly, the metal parts have been designed to make a sound similar to the bells of a Butsudan. Secondly, the cotton cushions appear to be a reference to Brazil’s northern harvest, where countless Japanese people worked during the twentieth century. Kokoro I restores the artist’s ancestry and, in doing so, reminds us of the ritualistic side of humanity. For a body in the world is also a body trying to make sense of it, relying on rituals and various explanatory narratives.
Meanwhile, Como folhas secas brings together fragments of the artist’s memory. Juliana Matsumura has stitched together distant times and places in a piece which is ultimately a tapestry of her life. It encompasses all the elements that repeatedly appear throughout the exhibition. There are ships, bridges, helical structures and spirals. All elements that are more or less evidently suggestive of a shift in space. To be in the world is to be scattered: in a liminal state between departing and arriving, between those who have left and those who have arrived. It means to have a history – which is a different one – and to start it again, in a new place. By their very nature, cities are a space for new beginnings. They are grounds of (un)rooting, where one makes their home in a place that was once not.
However, more than a shift in space, the exhibition’s suggested motion concerns the body as becoming, in constant mutation. The body in the world is not an absolute unit – it is in a state of flux; to be as a process. Designed in a room next to the exhibition, Inês Teles’ Project Room appears to condense these principles. Together with the three paintings in the series Toques sobre ondas de água, which mirror the flow and mutability of bodies, the sculpture Solid Lines, contorted and closed in on itself, takes us back to the circular nature of life. This piece is a confirmation that, even in perpetual motion, we always tend to return to our origin. This is what Juliana Matsumura did. I will as well. Ultimately, every new beginning brings us a little closer to where we started.
João Silvério curated the exhibition Um corpo no Mundo, which will be on show at Coletivo Amarelo until February 22.