Nazareth Pacheco artist portrait

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Nazareth Pacheco - Pain as a theme is her battlefield

“Pain as a theme is my battlefield. I lend meaning and form to frustration and pain. Whatever happens to my body has or acquires an abstract form, so pain may be said to be the price of redemption from formalism,” says Nazareth Pachecowho was born in São Paulo in 1961. In a postscript to a chapter of her master’s dissertation, “Objetos sedutores” (”Seductive Objects”), on visual poetry, this sentence from the Franco-American artist Louise Bourgeois defines the territory she is fighting over.

Though she first appeared at the 18th Biennale in São Paulo in 1985 as only a guide, her work was already to be seen in the section “Um e/ entre Outro/s”(“One and/between Other/s”) in 1998, and in 1999/2000 she was invited to the celebrated Sunday salons held by Louise Bourgeois.

Nazareth Pacheco transforms in her objects and installations the pain experienced in her own innately disabled body in a strategy of seduction. She exposes the paradox of lust, of the anguish of lust and of the anguish to which lust may lead. In exhibiting her body-related objects, she finds a vocabulary for her body, embodying its pain in art. She thereby finds physical images for the pains of her viewers, especially the female, since her objects and installations stem from the world of women.

Even her first objects of caoutchouk (India rubber) – like nearly all her later untitled works – from the end of the 80s smack of aggression and torture. As the critic Tadeu Chiarelli from São Paulo has said, they are dependent objects with forms affected by violent manipulation. The iron triangle (1989) looks even more threatening on account of its many spikes. Nazareth Pacheco calls this phase of her work “Skin... natural rubber”. She experiences the resistance to be overcome when caoutchouk is poured into a lead mould as a “wrestling bout” with the formlessness of the material, and she compares the pleasures of cutting, drilling and dowelling metal with her former pleasure as a child in being taught sewing by her grandmother.

Her ready-mades (1993) are more literally about violence and torture. These “jailed objects” in glass cases, which recall archives with their x-ray photographs, receipts, plaster-masks and pill-boxes, refer directly to the medico-aesthetic procedures which have been imposed upon them. In the following years Nazareth Pacheco extended her autobiographical work to dealing with the female body as a site of social corrective measures imposed on bodies in general. In 1994 she exhibited for the first time 80 transparent gynaecological specula in the Museu de arte Moderna de São Paulo , one of them jutting out in cold steel. The transparency, often used by her since then, refers to efforts undertaken to make pain invisible. The old-fashioned steel speculum juts like a ‘vagina dentata’ out of the transparent discretion, ruining the secrecy of the transparent and stressing the threat of female potency.

This threat of seduction was intensified by Nazareth Pacheco from 1997 on by use of scalpels and razorblades, sewing-needles and anglers’ hooks, which she is fond of tying together with glass beads to make new necklaces, accessories and clothes. Necklaces, which from afar look very seductive and filigree, turn out on closer inspection to be a danger to all involved. This terrifying seduction was taken a step further in the making of clothes. In the following years Nazareth Pacheco often arranged her objects as ensembles, as constellations in a heaven charted by de Sade and Bataille, Leiris and Breton, Lacan and Foucault. She associates pain with eroticism, viewing jouissance - the playing of playboys as described by Lacan - as the dance of death. There is no appeasement, since life is only a series of assaults. Even a child’s swing becomes in Nazareth Pacheco’s hands a tool of torture. Whoever wears her ornaments loses her skin and together with it her immunity and identity – the distinction between herself and her surroundings. Miriam Chnaidermann, a psychoanalyst, authoress and documentary filmmaker from São Paulo, writes in her essay in the catalogue “Nazareth Pacheco”: “Who is enjoying whose jouissance? Are our bodies (all) subjects of a jouissance grown sadistic? This in itself may reach the sublime if one questions one’s own identity, even shredding one’s skin with razorblades or slicing out tissues with scalpels, to remove the pus of daily life”

On beginning her work, Nazareth Pacheco had never heard of Louise Bourgeois, whose installations have likewise an autobiographical basis and embody her inner life and feelings. After Bourgeois had invited her in July 1999 to join her Sunday salon in New York, Pacheco also took part in the exhibition “Selections from Louise Bourgeois’ Salon”, for which she made a “just fertilized egg, a sperm and an egg splitting”. She took the exhibit back with her to Brazil and cast it in bronze at Bourgeois’ instigation.

The climax of her works so far has been the 15 sq. m. installation (untitled, 2003) made up of an acryl bed surrounded by a shimmering curtain. The curtain is made of razorblades and pearls, and razorblades glint in the transparent mattress. Not even a fakir would feel at ease, and a rake would break out in a cold sweat. This four-poster is enough to strip anyone’s pretensions bare.

All quotes are from the catalogue “Nazareth Pacheco” (June 2003).

Author: Ulrich Joßner

culturebase@hkw.de

Bio

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1961 Born in São Paulo, Brasil
1983 Attained a BFA from Universidade Mackenzie in São Paulo
2002 Attained a Master’s Degree in "Visual Poetics" from the Universidade São Paulo –USP –SP

Works

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Group Exhibitions

Exhibition / Installation

2005 Dor, Forma, Beleza, Estação Pinacoteca, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Coletiva de Acervo Galeria Murilo de Castro, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil O Corpo na Arte Contemporânea Brasileira, no Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 2004 Arte Contemporânea no Acervo Municipal -Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP, Brazil Casa Triângulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil O Preço da Sedução: do espartilho ao silicone – Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, SP Plataforma São Paulo 450 anos, Museu de Arte Contemporânea - USP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 2003 “Apropriações”, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil “Meus amigos” – Curadoria Caetano de Almeida, Espaço Mam Villa-Lobos, São Paulo, SP, Brazil “A arte atrás da arte” – Curadoria Guto Lacaz, Espaço Mam Villa-Lobos, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 2002 “Entre Líneas” - La Casa Encendida, Caja de Madrid, Spain The Thread Unraveled, Malba, Buenos Aires, Argentina O Mapa de Agora – Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil O Mapa de Agora – Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, RJ, Brazil Dangerous Beauty, JJC Manhattan, New York, NY, USA 2001 Virgin Territory, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC, USA The Thread Unraveled, El museu Del Barrio, New York, NY, USA Espelho Cego, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil Deslocamentos do eu, Itaú Cultural, Campinas, SP, Brazil Espelho Cego, Paço Imperial, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Recortes, Galeria Brito Cimino, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Trajetória da Luz na Arte Brasileira, Itaú Cultural, São Paulo, SP, Brazil O espírito da nossa época, Museu de Arte Moderna de SP, SP, Brazil Louise Bouegeois’ Salon, Artists Space, New York, NY, EUA Mostra de Arte Contemporânea Brasileira. MAM de Buenos Aires, Argentina PER-VERSUS, Obra Aberta, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil 2000 XII Mostra da Gravura de Curitiba, Paraná, PR, Brazil III - Galeria Brito Cimino, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Messagers de la Terre, Rur’Art Cript Poitou - Charentes, Rouillé, France Cutting Edge, ARCO’00, Madrid, Spain Ars Erótica - Sexo e Erotismo na Arte Brasileira, MAM, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Mujeres de las dos orillas -Centre Valencià de Cultura Mediterrània, Spain Entre a Arte e o Design, Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna São Paulo, SP, Brazil Acima do Bem e do Mal, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Sweet and Sour, Art & Public, Geneva, Switzerland A Vueltas con los Sentidos, Casa da América, Madrid, Spain O Objeto anos 60 - 90, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil Noturnos, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil Transcendência, Casa das Rosas, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1998 XXIV Biennial of São Paulo, SP, Brazil Cutting Edge, ARCO 98, Madrid, Spain Feminino/Plural - Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Rj, Brazil Medidas de Si, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil Arte de Expor Arte, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna, Salvador, BH, Brazil A Gravura Como Escultura, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna, Recife, PE, Brazil III Biennial Barro de América, Maracaibo, Venezuela III Biennial Barro de América, Museu Brasileiro da Escultura, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Arte Brasileira no Acervo do Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, Brazil Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Faltas, Valu Ória Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Espelho da Biennial, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, RJ, Brazil Anos 90, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 1997 Cutting Edge, ARCO, Madrid, Spain Novas Aquisições, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil Intervalos, Paço das Artes, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Experiências e Perspectivas, Museu Casa dos Contos, Ouro Preto, MG, Brazil Panorama de Arte Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1996 O Único, O Mesmo, O Afundamento, Valu Oria Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, Brazil Nazareth Pacheco/Rosana Mariotto, CEMIG, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil 1995 Espelhos e Sombras, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Rj, Rj, Brazil O objeto gravado, Museu da Gravura da Cidade de Curitiba, Pr, Brazil 1994 Espelhos e Sombras, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil A Foto Contaminada, Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1991 Projeto ABC, Pinacoteca do Estado, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Panorama de Arte Atual Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1990 Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP, Brazil Macunaíma 90, IBAC, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 1988 Panorama de Arte Atual Brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, SP, Brazil

Solo Exhibitions

Exhibition / Installation

2005 Galeria Murilo de Castro, Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil 2004 Entre o Tato e a Visão, Sesc São Carlos, SP, Brazil 2003 Galeria Brito Cimino, São Paulo, SP, Brazil Unicid, São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil Mercedes Viegas Arte Contemporânea, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 2002 Mulher – Pinacoteca Benedicto Calixto – Santos, SP, Brazil Centro Universitário Maria Antonia – USP, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 2000 Museu Universitário de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, MG, Brazil Galeria Canvas, Porto, Portugal 1999 Maison du Brèsil, Bruxelas, Belgium ICBRA, Instituto de Cultura Brasileira, Berlin, Germany 1997 Valu Oria Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1993 Gabinete de Arte Raquel Arnaud, São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1991 Projeto Macunaíma, IBAC, Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil 1990 Itaú Galeria de Brasília, DF, Goiânia, GO e Vitória, ES, Brazil Centro Cultural São Paulo, SP, Brazil 1989 Itaú Galeria de Ribeirão Preto, SP e Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil 1988 AB. OHM Galeria de Arte, São Paulo, SP, Brazil