february 11 - march 18, 2023
Jaqueline Martins gallery, São Paulo, preview available [here]
Lia D Castro: the Reflected ComplicityA man is lying on a couch, with his back to the viewer. Then there is another man lying on the couch — or is it the same one? — on the lap of a woman, whose clothes are made of paint and adhesive plaster. The same intimate scene is repeated various times, in a geometric interior scene composed of blues and greens. She is reading a book. Sometimes, he reads as well. There is a table lamp next to them. In some of the paintings, there are other paintings — like the reflections of a kaleidoscope.
Through constant repetition — of gestures, scenes, characters and colors — artist Lia D Castro highlights the reflective dimension of the paintings and of the encounters they represent, both in the sense of mirroring, and of contemplation and thought. One of them includes a quote from bell hooks: “Love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect and trust”, that flows round the border of a wall. Perhaps all of Castro’s works are anchored in love. Not a bourgeois love — so often confused with gender exploitation — but that defined by hooks, which is also “a space of critical awakening and pain.”[1] A love which is active, collaborative and complicit: in the process of producing paintings or photographs, in meetings and in social, affective, financial and creative exchanges.
Besides being an artist, Castro is also an intellectual, educator and sex worker, among many other things. The portraits are of her lovers and clients, with whom she establishes a relationship of intimacy and commitment. They read together. She invites us to enter the scenes, as if we were complicit participants in that quiet moment, which in no way reflects the social stigma that falls on dissident bodies, and on sex workers.
Perhaps the works are a reverse image of a society structured by social, racial, territorial and gender hierarchies, or represent a desire to dismantle this deeply violent “contract”. It is as if they restore the humanity of those who are socially undesirable, repelled, invisible and dead. In Castro’s works, we see people embodied by stories and affections, people who like to rest, to lose themselves in thoughts and daydreams, to be close to beautiful objects, friends, and loved ones.
In the Axs Nossxs Filhxs (To Our Children) series we see repeated portraits of the back of Davi’s head. The thickly applied oil paint reinforces the opacity of what we are unable to see, such as his face, while welcoming our gaze upon fragments of his body. The repetition of the same portrait on many canvases — as if it were a variation on a musical theme — suggests that the encounters extended over time as they were painted, in an intimate collaboration. In another work, two portraits and one of interior scenes with a book are shown in an exhibition space being appreciated by a woman in a flowery dress, who examines the painting with care. We see her from the rear, like Davi and the man lying on the sofa. These paintings of calm scenes, however, are not trivial and represent a process of subjectivation often denied to some bodies, such as those of black cisgender or transsexual women. According to hooks:
Work for women artists is never just the moment when we write, or do other art, like painting, photography, paste-up, or mixed media. In the fullest sense, it is also the time spent in contemplation and preparation. This solitary space is sometimes a place where dreams and visions enter and sometimes a place where nothing happens. Yet it is as necessary to active work as water is to growing things.[2]
In other works, the models are posed in uncomfortable, or at least unstable, positions on office chairs, naked, squatting. Next to one of these portraits, of an anonymous white man, is written: “he who is worthy of being loved,” which implies that other people are not. In a subtle yet striking way, Castro deals with political issues that are also deeply violent, such as the series of small still life paintings that measure just 20 x 30 cm. Besides returning to this genre, considered the lowest in the pictorial hierarchy in the Western tradition, the artist alludes to the average life expectancy of trans people in Brazil — who die, often murdered, between twenty and thirty years of age. Thus, in Castro’s work love and complicity are not selfish and depoliticized feelings, but they are deeply committed to social reality. In fact, how can we not remember that, historically, small flower paintings are associated with middle and high-class, white, cisgender women who are often married, as a suitable pastime? As another kaleidoscope full of meanings and resonances, the artist reflects on gender hierarchies, art history, transphobia and biased notions of femininity, in works that invite the viewer to examine them closely.
Along with the paintings, the exhibition includes prints and drawings in the series Michê, hipocrisia e carne (Male Prostitutes, hypocrisy and flesh), depicting men from the rear, and their ephemeral and semi-clandestine encounters. Photographs and objects are used to construct portraits and self-portraits in which the artist’s vision and the desires of her clients are confused, who photograph their own bodies, in addition to the Polaroid portraits of the books they read together and the very DNA of those men, stored in condoms. The works in Triplo do Auto/Retrato (Triple Self Portrait), from the series Seus filhos também praticam (Your Children Also Do This) may seem more aggressive or direct than the paintings. But they are also recollections and constructions of physical, sexual and intellectual complicity; relationships that, when exposed in their fragments, invite us to imagine them in their entirety and to be, once again, complicit in those stories.
In other words, Lia D Castro’s works are an invitation to create existences and intimate stories, to share a space of affection with the people represented, to empathize with the desire to lie on the couch and enjoy a moment of rest, pause and laziness. Perhaps they work as a mirror, implicating us in those stories as witnesses of a series of relationships that society insists on silencing. There is no innocence now; the works taught us about love.
Notes
[1] hooks, bell. All About Love: New Visions. New York: Harper Collins, 2018.
[2] ____. “Women Artists: the Creative Process.” In Art on My Mind. Visual Politics. New York: The New Press, 1995, p. 126.
