"When I was invited to work in Vienna, the first question that came to my mind was: what makes it possible in 2013? A residency, in Austria, with 3 artists from the Southern Hemisphere – a  Brazilian, a Colombian and a Nigerian artist- it would not have been likely five years ago, for instance… Would it be viable now because of the “new” global economic characteristics? Or an essential exchange/permutation between distant countries?

These questions are closely related to two pieces: “Navio Negreiro” (Slave Ship) and “Banhista – Das G.O.D. Captivator” (Bather –DAS G.O.D. Captivator), entirely built in the Krinzinger residency in the first semester of 2013.

In “Banhista – Das G.O.D. Captivator”, the same questions are still alive, with the additional humor, mostly tragic, which is common to all of my productions. Built with materials coming from homeware stores from the commercial center of Vienna (MariaHilfer Strasse) and products from the Nascht market, the work formally refers to the famous Picasso masterpiece,“Demoiselle D’Avignon”.

Incremented by clichés that are commonly applied to countries like Brazil, the“beach culture”, where sex, drugs and the ghost of the colonial period, is still extremely visible.  A fast stroll around Rio de Janeiro is enough to see this cultural process, some might say. In this aspect, it is interesting to mention the need Picasso had, for instance, to drink from “distant” African fountains when genially formulating new aesthetics.

The starting point of the work, is a bath towel with tropical impressions found in the same commercial center of Vienna. The nonsense combination of this element with a magnificent truncheon including a still dark and little known symbol of the three anti-fascist arrows, found in the flea market dramatically marks this piece. It is like thinking of the total extermination of Fascism, Nazism and Monarchy – the ideal of this symbol – in a context in which immigrants sell low-cost products, and the international balance of trade and the work division show that freedom and equality are still utopic."(Text by Adriano Costa, São Paulo, December 16, 2013)