Companionship Horizones #7 / Studying Fertility (Performance)
For the 23rd Fondation Pernod Ricard Award, Fabiana Ex-Souza proposes, as the final event of the exhibition and with the complicity of some of the artists of the Award, a performative moment. This is a new step in her ongoing study on fertility, initiated in the spring of 2022 during a working stay in Belem do Pará (Brazil) and materialized by her multimedia installation Truths About Care, presented as part of the exhibition Horizones.
With Studying Fertility (Performance) envisioned as an "operetta", she weaves together the voices of healing merchants filmed in the Ver-O-Peso market in Belem do Pará, as well as texts present in her current research, a musical selection, and the making and sharing of a dish made from peas and white beans, the very ones that make up the surface of her works.
Since her founding gesture of expunging her family name inherited from slavery in Brazil - when Fabiana De Souza became Fabiana Ex-Souza - the artist-researcher has been deploying a practice linked to the ecology of care, to the re-actualization of archives, to the processes of transmutation and repair of what she calls "ghostly objects". The installation Truths About Care includes the video-narrative of a transformative journey, mostly made at the Ver-O-Peso market in Belem do Pará, Brazil, in which merchants present and sell their healing drinks. It is also made of textile pieces woven from plant and organic materials (including Studying Fertility 1 and Studying Fertility 2). Between truths, dreams, and acceptance, the artist offers a public and intimate narrative about fertility.
Image : Fabiana Ex-Souza, Truths About Care, 2022, detail
