MARIA CLARA CONTRUCCI
Vvideo & Perffo
CONQUER THE WORLD, LIVE ON NOTHING, BECOME A GHOST; 2023
VIDEO INSTALLATION
Doubles of colors, two bodies that move and a narrative between fragment and fabrication written by two hands. The body translating the color, translating the word, translating the image and so on. The work proposes a history of the world through complementary colors, composition, gesture and writing. Based on the idea that vision and color guide events and sensations, understanding these associations offers "a shortcut to people's hearts"; orange and blue as seduction, red and green as what is routine and recognizable, and finally yellow and purple as what transcends our understanding. A narrative that goes from the absence of light (black) to the excess of luminosity (white), suggesting that all aspects of life contain and are sustained by opposing and complementary forces. The video was entirely created and filmed using the ZOOM platform during the quarantine period in 2021, thinking about new ways of creating images and intersecting languages.
Galeria SESC Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro
BEAUTIFUL TO DIE; 2023
VIDEO & PERFORMANCE
The work is a film-performance based on the complementary colors orange and blue: a combination famous for its visual appeal to the viewer. Unfolding this premise, we visually explore the bodies of two women, forming an image that is both vivid and graphic of bodies in interaction and integration. In conjunction with the choreography, a narrative text in audio form discusses beauty and decadence, sweetness and violence, plane and texture, color and form. The universe of the work encompasses beautiful, distant, incomprehensible female bodies, statuary, classical paintings, fragments of gestures, the construction of the self through clothes, monuments, impossible loves, among other things, finally unfolding in the desire to violate these bodies in order to seek proof that they are real. Unreachable, ethereal images that can only be tangible when violated. Creation, text and performance: Maria Clara Contrucci and Manuela Libman
GRETA Galpão (São Paulo), Casa Belgrado (Buenos Aires)
TAMAGOCHI_BALÉ; 2023
VIDEO
The video was developed in partnership with Anna Costa e Silva and Manuela Libman, to occupy the Helio Oiticia Arts Center (RJ) in May 2023. The work was written and created by the duo in partnership with Anna. Based on the provocation of what a world without relationships would be like, the work's narrative was built around themes such as neoliberal subjectivity, the universe of dreams, hyper-digitalization and eroticism as an encounter with the other. Direction: Anna Costa e Silva Script and co-creation: Anna Costa e Silva, Maria Clara Contrucci, Manuela Libman Performance: Manuela Libman, Maria Clara Contrucci and Dani Câmara Film editing: Darks Miranda
Centro Cultural Helio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 2023
THE WOMAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD;
ACTION GAME
The process consisted in writing a personal statement (I am) every day as a kind of diary, a memory exercise, and as an activity that aims to investigate and bring to consciousness individual internal processes. The result is a compilation of 72 letters (watercolor on paper) corresponding to each of the days. THE DECK The proposal to use the cards as an oracle, like a Tarot deck, investigates the possibility of particular processes resonating in other people in a universal way, like the archetypes of the Tarot. THE BOOK The work is accompanied by 2 narrative poems entitled PREVENTING THE PAST. Each verse of the poem corresponds, in sequence, to a card They narrate (or reinvent) processes of personal internal change, as an attempt to create meaning and continuity for a set of apparently disconnected days. THE ACTION We start by opening the game - body, heart, head - with the Smith-Waite deck, a tarot reading - At the end, on top of the game, I open my own oracle. At the end of the game, a unique poem emerges from the unique intersection of the cards chosen by the player. The card-work-poem remains with the spectator.
ERAS; 2020-2023
PERFORMANCE & VIDEOS
Eras collective (Nina Velho, Maria Clara Contrucci and Maria Carolina Werneck) has been investigating the relationship between nature and bodies, inspired mainly by the book "The Life of Plants" by philosopher Emanuele Coccia. As a way of reacting affectively to the climate crisis and the cruel exploitation of our natural and human resources, we asked ourselves: "What can we learn from natural life? How can the feeling that we are integrated into it, that we are part of an interconnected cosmology, contribute to a more ecological future? The prefix Eco means precisely the idea of interconnectedness, that "everything is in everything" (Coccia). The works explore not only plant life but also its relationship with human processes, events, facts or emotions, creating a cosmological atmosphere interwoven with contemporary elements.
THE CONCAVE OF THE CONVEX,
THE CONVEX OF THE CONCAVE; 2021
PERFORMANCE
The convex of poetry is the body, the concave of the body is poetry. Performance for the group exhibition "Sentado à Beira do Tempo, A Poética de Murilo Mendes" The work was created from various phrases taken from the book "Poliedro" by Murilo Mendes. The performance is a vocabulary of gestures and actions that link directly to the phrases on display and translate the other artists' works into movement, making the invisible geometry of Murilo's poetry visible in the body. Both the actions and the phrases speak to the very idea of the polyhedron that the book evokes: multiple faces, opposition and convergence, concreteness and mystery.
Centro Cultural dos Correios, Rio de Janeiro
LEGALIZE VULNERABILITY; 2019
ONLINE ACTION, TATTOO, TOTE BAG
#LegalizeVulnerability was a virtual and physical action created in partnership with Anna Costa e Silva. It was an anti-compulsory happiness manifesto, where we invited people to publish photos of themselves crying. In partnership with O NOTÍVAGO, we also developed the tote bag.
PRESENTIMENT
RESENTIMENT
SENTIMENT; 2021
VIDEO & DRAWING
Um ensaio em vídeo e desenho sobre o sentimento e o pressentimento de uma separação. As cores quente e fria, vermelho e azul, se encontram e se separam pensando a relação entre as palavras de mesma sonoridade "LEAVING" e "LIVING".
WE'LL MEET AGAIN; 2021
VIDEO PERFORMANCE
A choreography created from a hygiene manual against the spread of the COVID-19 virus, in the hope of reunion. A gesture of hygiene becomes both a prayer and an intimate expression.
MEWEMWWM; 2021
VIDEO
The work is a game of semantic possibilities generated from the gesture of extending 3 fingers, in a correspondence between the body and the letter. The gesture can represent the letter M, W or E, depending on the direction in which it is viewed. Through the graphic possibilities of the gesture and the letter, I think of the idea of encounter. ME and WE, me and us, present themselves as possible words to be formed by the same spelling.
AFFECTIONS ETIQUETTE EXERCISE; 2017
INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE
Exploring the culture of Portuguese pastries created by nuns in convents, the work consists of a performance in which the audience is offered a kind of tasting menu of Portuguese pastries along with etiquette manuals. The instructions were created inspired by the curious names of emotions and body parts given to these pastries. A specific feeling and a way of handling, eating or not eating was created for each treat, exploring affections through food and vice versa.
Casa Animal, BoCA Biennial of Contemporary Arts, Lisboa
VISIT CARD; 2017
INTERACTIVE PERFORMANCE
Cartão de Visita is a proposal created in collaboration with António Guimarães Ferreira. In an object like a business card, the spectator finds a small booklet that proposes a route and a set of actions - for pairs - to be carried out by visitors to the Lisbon Museum of Natural History and Science. The actions use the museum's environments and objects to reflect, in a playful way, on relationships and the possibilities of creating a connection with others.
Museu de História Natural e da Ciência de Lisboa
CooLLaborationss
BODY WATER
BALLET; 2024
PERFORMANCE
Performance for GianMarco Porru and Carolina Favre during their residency at Solar dos Abacaxis. The body in relation to water, from a sacred, symbolic and lyrical point of view. A sacred dive into an imaginary pool.
Solar dos Abacaxis, Rio de Janeiro
PÚRPURA; 2018
PERFORMANCE
Púrpura is a site-specific performative experience that explores different locations in the city as possible fields for one-to-one encounters. The work is a creation of situations for one spectator at a time in places of consumption: shopping malls, supermarkets and airports, always led by women, based on their own life stories. The experience begins in a car at a meeting point in Rio de Janeiro. 4 spectators are driven by a performer, without knowing their destination. The performer takes each of the spectators to a different location, where they meet another performer and a universe created by her, in a setting that already exists in the city. Directed by: Anna Costa e Silva Co-creation: Maria Clara Contrucci, Nanda Félix, Ana Abbot and Luciana Novak
FOR SOMEONE WHO
IS LISTENING TO ME; 2021
ONLINE ACTION, PERFORMANCE
The experience begins with an open call for you to receive a video letter directly to your e-mail. Each performer has written a letter to an unknown person, talking about their sensations, pains and journeys during this period of social isolation. At the end of the video, the viewer is invited to reply to the letter about what they are feeling and perceiving. From then on, an exchange of messages begins between the actress and the viewer, always in private, which can last until the end of the lockdown - or until whenever they want. Directed by: Anna Costa e Silva Co-creation: Maria Clara Contrucci, Nanda Félix, Ana Abbot and Luciana Novak
VIDEO: MONITOR SYMPTOMS
password: cartapravc
DOPADA; 2019
PERFORMANCE
Lying on the floor of the gallery, the woman sleeps, under the effect of a sleeping pill, in a long white sweater, which spreads out on the surface and connects, by the head, to a red crocheted tube nailed to the wall. This is the scene that makes up Laura Lima's work "Dopada".
Cavalariças, EAV parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro
STRIKE SCORE; 2018
PERFORMANCE
The work is the result of research by Scottish artist Stephanie Black-Daniels as part of the Corpos abertos residency at Galeria Despina in Rio de Janeiro. The performance consists of a sequence of self-defense movements developed by the artist on an object, also constructed by her, with a material that leaves marks when struck. Creation: Stephanie Black-Daniels Performance: Maria Clara Contrucci & Manuela Libman