Malleable. Notes on Caio Marcolini’s sculptural beings
Woven metal, transparent organisms, soft structures. The attempt to describe Caio Marcolini’s sculptural production – by juxtaposing these seemingly contrasting qualities – reflects the multifaceted nature of his works. Although the nature of a structure is normally to be rigid, Marcolini’s technique renders them flexible: metal wires interwoven by the artist (who builds his own tools) give form to objects that resemble both human organs and a community of organisms, a biota for example, that also lives in our viscera.
One can look through the interwoven mesh of these “organisms” to observe their interior, the air-filled void that gives them shape and structure. In this case, elements that seem to be contradictory are transformed into a tangle of meanings that defy easy interpretation and open up possibilities – semantic and sensorial – related to the multiple relationships between bodies, not necessarily human.
Some of the works look like they are somehow inhabiting the wall, as though extracting a kind of sap from it. Others exist on bases, touching the floor, or even hanging in midair. A recurring drop-like shape appears to be growing, on the verge of detaching from a whole that is simultaneously unstable and temporary, even though it’s a sculpture. There are also cases in which that sort of “sucker” appendage, which in many cases seems to be feeding on the wall, is suspended in the air, thus challenging the straightforward interpretation that supposes a direct relationship between form and function. Why should there be function, or utility, when, according to Ailton Krenak, life is not useful?
Even though they are made of metal, like the traditional public sculptures of violent heroes celebrated by Western art (especially in the 19th century), Marcolini’s works are, as previously mentioned, malleable and transparent. This introduces a new interpretive key: they are visible in their entirety, without any concealed internal support structure, which, in the case of the “heroes” might be related to the beings whose work (also in the sense used by Physics) supports their rigid and grandiloquent shell. The works are furthermore lightweight and can be easily transported, carried, rearranged, and even worn.
This “inconstancy” of the works, besides rejecting the rigidity of traditional sculpture, recalls the well-known essay by Brazilian anthropologist Eduardo Viveiro de Castro, “O mármore e a murta” [literally “The Marble and the Myrtle”, translated as “The Problem of Unbelief in the Brazilian 16th Century”], which begins with a quote from António Vieira, taken from a 1657 publication. The priest says:
Some nations are naturally hard, tenacious, and constant, and with difficulty they receive the faith and leave behind the errors of their ancestors; [...] but, once they have given themselves over, once they have received the faith, they stay firm and constant in it, like statues of marble: it is no longer necessary to work with them. There are other nations, however – and such are those of Brazilthat receive everything that is taught them with great docility and ease, without arguing, without objecting, without doubting, without resisting. But they are statues of myrtle that, if the gardener lifts his hand and his scissors, will soon lose their new form, and return to the old natural brutishness, becoming a thicket as they were before.
The Portuguese writer’s disdain for the untamable “thicket” and, metaphorically, towards the Brazilian indigenous people, reflects not only his ignorance about a multitude of lives and associations but also small – yet numerous – stories of antiheroes who reject the durability and authority of faith, marble, and cast bronze. With his malleable works, might Marcolini also be rejecting the authority of the art canon, joining the long lineage of artists who have proposed other materialities, concepts, and forms in the field of sculpture?
Some pieces are made using more than one type of metal wire, thus reaffirming the idea of symbiosis or a mutually beneficial relationship of beings that come together to create something that exists only on the basis of this encounter. This is true of the Membranas [Membranes] series, made with wires of iron and brass, two metals with different hues and properties, giving rise to a vast array of possible combinations, plus many others that can emerge at the points of contact between the bulges and recesses of their autonomous forms.
Wires of copper and iron are also used in the Capturados [Captured] series to suggest different organisms, but this time in a much tenser relationship: seemingly on the brink of annihilation and engulfment by a larger body, as though in the embrace of a boa constrictor. Nature, however, does not pass moral judgments; the death of one living being often means life for another. In both these series, as well as in other works, the material is indeed present but with constantly changing aims and in a continuous state of becoming. “The Brazilians,” lamented Vieira, “even after they have come to believe, are unbelieving.” One could use synonyms like “defiant” and “disobedient”: the malleability of form as a rejection of the colonial-modern civilizing project.
The titles of certain pieces, including those of the series SYS (System), CLN (Colony), MBN (Membrane), or FSL (Fossil), in combination with the small metal plaque they bear, allude to the scientific cataloging systems aimed at categorizing the extraordinary diversity of living species that inhabit the planet. Such a system, however, tends to disregard the interaction between them and all the events – temporary or not – that arise from this intimate contact. It also overlooks the colonial violence that was often part and parcel with the work of biologists, ethnologists, taxonomists, and other professionals, including museum curators and conservators.
In other words, even though the idea of autonomy is much vaunted in the West, no animal, not even a human, is able to live alone – and the artist seems quite aware of this. The works in the CLN series, for example, while directly alluding to colonial cataloging, also refer to the sense of colony to denote interspecies associations of various individual organisms, as seen in coral reefs or Portuguese man o’ wars (an organism which, in a sense, is the exact opposite of the old-time sailing warship). Colonies, caravels, sculptures, wires. Once again, Marcolini’s work embodies the ambivalence of meanings allied with the malleability of forms, thereby avoiding the totalizing rigidity typical of Western thought.
By simultaneously alluding to and rejecting systems of representation, including through the image, these works can be seen as running counter to the notion of the pioneering, “trailblazing spirit” of contemporary art – instead, they seem to engage in a genealogy of formal and conceptual dialogues, both with other artists and with nonhuman beings. This strikingly recalls the “veils” that emerge with dramatic suddenness on mushrooms of the family Phallaceae, as well as the sculptures of Japanese-American artist Ruth Asawa, who was interested in exploring the “interdependent and integral” relationship between inner and outer. Brazilian artist Ana Maria Tavares also made works with braided metal, in homage to the Cocó River, which runs through the territory that is now the state of Ceará to flow into the Atlantic Ocean at the state capital.
By weaving wires of various metals and taking into account their multiple forms of association, Caio Marcolini seems to be telling us that the forms of life, art, and insubordination are all involved there, despite all odds. There is no need to carve the marble by force, as Father Vieira would have liked: the works multiply, rearrange themselves, and take part (always temporarily) in new landscapes.
Vieira’s quote translated by Gregory Duff Morton