Threads of Tomorrow
Textile museum
New Orleans • March/2024
Curated by: Rodrigo Frazão
Virtual collective exhibition
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FLO Botanical Studio
Sao Paulo - SP • December /2023
Curated by: Karen Suehiro
solo exhibition
Far away. Perhaps this is the word that best fits today. How present are you or do you feel right now? In this cosmopolitan universe, where horns are the musical notes that accompany the passing of the hours and points of light are the screens that take over our gaze, making the 'emptiness' the 'filled' of the soul. The desire here is for the soul to fill the void. To see, to feel, to hear. Human senses that make us fill our soul with LIFE, this is the appeal of Raphael Dias and FLO Atelier Botânico, with the exhibition CLOSE.
Pulsing tropicality is how they make human beings (re)approach nature. Through tufting techniques, Raphael makes us navigate through colors, textures, shapes and a lot of time. Paper cutouts and collages are his studies that make his soul cross his love for the waters of the beaches, the calm of the touch of feet on the rocks and the beauty of the dawn of the days through the wool and its thousands of stitches, in the cozy tapestries present on every surface. And, through the creation of arrangements, curation and a lot of design, FLO Atelier Botânico makes us enter the tropical garden with soul and body, rescuing the beauty and richness of Brazilian plants.
Together, they make the birds and the breeze of the winds become musical notes, the sunlight the warmth we feel on our skin and the shadow we see on the ground as it hits the different curves and textures near the window. It is possible to be present and feel love for life. CLOSE is a perfect starting point.
Karen Suehiro- curator
Daily House
Sao Paulo - SP • September /2022
Curated by: Heloisa Strobel
solo exhibition
A 14-story building that bears the greatest icon of the national modernist movement and is located in the center of Rio de Janeiro. Known as Palácio Gustavo Capanema, in honor of its creator, or even the Ministry of Education and Health, an allusion to the function for which it was designed, during the second term of Getulio Vargas, at a time when the two ministries were still a single department.
The building, which has been under renovation since 2014 and is closed to visitors, was elected the most advanced building in the world under construction in the early 1940s by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is the first to use the principles of modernist architecture on a monumental scale. Avant-garde since its conception, it was designed in 1936 by a team of young Brazilian modernists: Lucio Costa, Oscar Niemeyer, Affonso Reidy, Jorge Moreira, Carlos Leão and Ernâni Vasconcelos - under the coordination of the former and with guidance from Le Corbusier.
A jewel of Brazilian architecture and history, it features landscaping by Roberto Burle Marx and houses over 50 works of art and furniture by leading Brazilian artists. Works by Cândido Portinari - considered one of its main collections - paintings and sculptures by Bruno Giorgi, Adriana Janacópulus, Celso Antônio and Jacques Lipchitz, among others. The dream of a modern and modernist minister - Capanema was known for imbuing education with an artistic and cultural bias and seeking an ideal of national art and civic spirit - he materialized the utopia of a modern country, which promised to break with the colonialist past.
At the height of the cultural decline that swept the country, in 2021 it was listed as one of the properties to be auctioned at the Union's “real estate fair”, led by the Ministry of Economy of the current government. Such heresy motivated the mobilization of several intellectuals and national political forces, resulting in the decision being reversed and the building being returned to its previous function. It is expected to be reopened in 2022, housing different agencies and functions, such as Funarte, Ancine, Ibram and Iphan.
With a pure and refined photographic eye, Raphael Dias' aesthetics encompasses various interpretations of nature. A visual artist with many facets, he began his journey in photography, then moved on to drawing and collage - and ended up in tapestry - a platform where the artist presents his visual strength with depth of textures and historical research.
The artist's trajectory is interconnected by composition in a general way - always rearranging information in an aesthetic way with function - such as the Casa Diária store and the spaces that permeate his daily life, such as the artist's own studio and his home. A look at living, inhabiting, architecture and the history of built spaces.
In Moderno Tropical, this perspective delves into in-depth research on the iconic Capanema Building - the former Ministry of Education - a historic modernist landmark that carries with it other sources of Brazilian representation, such as the dozens of works of art - from paintings to tapestries - inside.
By recovering these images - all of which have been kept from the public eye, since the building has been closed since 2014 - Raphael uses his gaze to explore each room and each symbol of the project, celebrating their forms in new compositions - represented in his works. Each tapestry is an architecture of planes and reliefs that meet in pure, organic forms. The collage process that precedes each composition can be seen in the boundaries constructed with wool stitches, which often look like torn paper.
It is this composition of planes, presented in blocks of vivid and harmonious colors, that will lead us on a tour of the Capanema Building. Closed, condemned to the whims of the government, it finds an escape under this textured gaze of the artist on the tapestry, leading us to question who has the right to own what built our country.
Heloisa Strobel - curator
In August 2021, I read the news about the Capanema Palace being listed among the properties that the federal government could sell during Jair Bolsonaro's term. I reflected on everything that this building and the works inside it represent for our culture. I didn't have the pleasure of visiting it before it was closed for renovations; I only visited its surroundings, in the silence of a sunny Sunday morning. I contemplated the impeccable modernist architecture from afar and, through the holes in the fence that surrounds the building, I saw the fresco by Portinari, immersed in the mix of blue tones. I also saw fragments of Burle Marx's gardens in intense greens. Through the research for this exhibition, I imagined a visit to the palace in 1945, when it was inaugurated and an entire idealization of the future and the utopia of a modern Brazil came to fruition. And now, a year after reading the news, I present tapestries that represent not only an imaginary visit to the palace, but also my inner universe. A sunny visit, like that Sunday morning. In search of sunshine, in the face of the current socioeconomic turbulence and the cloudy days of life, the works woven here are a tribute to this iconic building of Brazilian modernism, to all the people who were part of its conception and to the Brazilian people. Our cultural history is not for sale and will not be silenced.
Raphael Dias, 2022.