PRESS RELEASE
Inaugurated on August 17 at GDA, “How to Finish a Thesis: The Time of Color” is a solo show by Juliana dos Santos, curated by Khadyg Fares.
A month before the opening, Dos Santos occupied the GDA space for the production of the exhibition, activating her work as she progressed with the setup, which coincided with the completion of her PhD thesis.
In addition to paintings arranged throughout the space, an immersive installation was created, allowing visitors to engage with the artist’s work right at the entrance of the gallery. “[…] By enveloping us, Dos Santos manages to place us in close contact with color, with the explosion of textures, with movements that draw rhythms and gestures, with the delicacy of the violet tones of clitoria ternatea,” writes Fares in the curatorial text. “Her intention is to make us quiet so that we can, in this time of color, hear the murmurs of a deep blue.”
With research focused on the study of color and an intense engagement with Blue Clitoria, Juliana dos Santos’s work expresses itself in both theoretical and practical fields, testing the limits of linear temporality.
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TEXT
How to finish a thesis: the time of color
By Khadyg Fares, August 2024
blue as a color that marks Afro-diasporic experiences and I found myself threshing flowers to paint with blue petals, which will never be fixed in time: the Clitoria Ternátea flower, which, blown on watery paper, teaches me paths of increasingly misshapen blue shapes, difficult to name and, therefore, sometimes it is not possible to retain them in time. (Excerpt from Juliana dos Santos’ doctoral thesis)
How do you put together the criteria that “define” a color?
It can be said that since Aristotle, understanding the things of the world through ontology has become one of the main quests of Western thought. For this approach, everything could be defined by the order of being; and among all these things are colors. Blue is the color that Juliana dos Santos has dedicated herself to understanding. In this task, however, the artist has not closed herself off to the search for an exact delimitation. Dos Santos directs her apprehension and interpretation of the world towards Afro-diasporic knowledge and the valorization of encounters. It is in this sense that her paintings with the clitoria ternatea flower are created through an eye-body that is completed with the memory of the high-pitched chants in unison of the Black Men’s Rosary festivals, the flowing capes of the king and queen of the congado and the rhythmic gungas from Moçambique. It’s a blue that inherits the desire for sonority, for deeply blue music, like when we listen to Duke Ellington’s Azure.
There is a confluent way of existing that establishes a complex and open relationship. The blue of the clitoria ternatea also becomes the occupation of spaces, dances and sounds in movement, and time in its duration, which can be seen, for example, in the flower’s oxidation process. It is through these openings to the possibilities of existence that Dos Santos takes blue as an expanded concept that is established in the social, political, imagetic, textual, cinematographic and sound fields. This exhibition coincides with the completion of her PhD thesis, both dedicated to her research into painting with flowers.
The installation features large-format paintings that expand throughout the space. By involving us, Dos Santos manages to bring us body to body with the color, with the explosion of textures, with the movements that draw out rhythms and gestures, with the delicacy of the violet tones of the clitoria ternatea. Her intention is to make us quiet so that we can hear the murmurs of a deep blue in this time of color.
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ABOUT
Juliana Dos Santos is a visual artist, a master’s graduate in art education, and a Capes scholarship PhD student in Arts at the Institute of Arts of UNESP. Her research explores the intersection of art, history, and education, focusing on the engagement of Black artists in practices of representation. She investigates the blue color of the Clitoria Ternatea flower as a sensitive experience that expands the senses. She participated in the Public Artistic Residency Program in Sertão Negro, invited by the 35th São Paulo Art Biennial, and served as a resident artist at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna (2018). Nominated for the Pipa Prize (2023/2024), she participated in the 12th Mercosur Biennial and the 3rd Frestas – Triennial of Arts at Sesc Sorocaba. She was awarded the 31st Exhibition Program of the Centro Cultural São Paulo (2021) and the Project Season at Paço das Artes (2019). Her works are part of the collections of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, the Museum of the Portuguese Language, and the Centro Cultural São Paulo.
Khadyg Fares is a researcher, educator, and curator focusing on anticolonial studies and image theories. She holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Art History from UNIFESP, and is also a graduate in Social Communication from Mackenzie. She has curated exhibitions such as “How to Finish a Thesis: The Time of Color” by Juliana dos Santos and “Xirê das Yabás: The Fertility of the World” at the Museum of Sexual Diversity. She has participated in projects like “Geoprópolis” and “A Barganha,” and co-organized the public program “Tramas do Comum.” Fares has been part of the Exhibitions and Programming and Museology and Collection Departments at the Museum of Sexual Diversity, as well as the Research Department at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo. She was also the coordinator of the Colloquium on Cinema and Art in Latin America – COCAAL.
GDA is a group of artists organized around the production and sale of their own works. They created this platform to circulate, present, and facilitate their artworks, as well as to actively position themselves in the financial, contractual, and market decisions that shape their work. They are interested in creating a flexible and present structure that can encompass different formats, research, experimentation, and types of work. With this project, they aim to open space for research and the generation of thought, creating places for meeting and debate to explore other forms of market insertion. Currently, the acronym GDA stands for Galeria De Artistas (Gallery of Artists), but it may represent other things in the future.