Theogony marks the start of an artistic project with mythological origin in a poem written by Hesiod in the eighth century before Christ. It is a work with 1022 verses describing the origin of the gods, as well as his involvement with the men and heroes which was transposed to the canvas by two artists Roberto Macedo Alves and Nair Morna. Two personal views that derived in 11 reinterpretations of photographs of "ordinary" people in the form of Greek deities. An exhibition not to be missed in the House of Seedlings.
Theogony / 1 why the choice of this theme?
Roberto Macedo Alves: It's about the search for transcendence. It was an issue I discussed with my colleague Nair. We thought this technological world had lost a little of its transcending magic, everything had a scientific explanation that ultimately take some of the charm of these things. We addressed the importance of myths, the old traditions and this conversation eventually drift into another that was the importance of the picture and so did the experience of designing eleven ordinary people as if they were Greek gods or strange creatures somehow portray that there is transcendence in each of us.
Yes, but there is also a parallel world. Some of the portraits reflect your personal universe, professional and even your taste, many of the frames are the people you are closest to.
RRP: It is an interpretation of the Greek world. In the background there are two types of works, mine and those of Nair. Her works are stricter, more formal and academic. Mine is the world of the Greeks, through the filter of the artist, as I see them. The artist always leaves something of himself in his work, hence the use of some personal elements to highlight the portrayed, this aspect of the divine and such nobility of character that I see in many of them. In this case were relatives and friends, because they went along with it, other people could take it badly been portrayed as gods.
This duality between your work and Nair was always the starting point, or came later?
RMA: It was always the starting point, so the base is always the same. We start with the same picture and the same God and that each of us creates his own. We did not communicate while arose this creative process. There was no exchanged of ideas, to avoid interference from one side or the other. At the end I would only see the Greek gods according to Nair and the same applied towards her. We wanted to see how the sensitivity of each artist filtered the same basis, a picture and a word.
In your works this time you used the collages, why?
RRP: It's a way to get several overlapping layers of content. Almost as ancient papyri, in which you had written text over text and other content revealed. I wanted to play with this overlap of concepts, to enrich them. Every detail is related to each of the works, with a specific god and my vision of each. The collage allowed the further enrichment of the work.
It is an open project to be continued?
RRP: Yes, we are very excited about this idea early on. We wanted 11 people and our closest circle. However, the Greek poem that spawned this exhibition makes so many references to so many gods; we thought it would be funny to portraying them without repeating. Drawing and adding new gods for example, an annual exhibition. The main idea is the growth of this group and adds more people to this concept.
