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exp. 1
exp. 2
exp. 3
Flávio de Carvalho (in collaboration with Raymond Frajmund)
Venues: KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Gropius Bau, 11th Berlin Biennale c/o ExRotaprint
Was also part of: exp. 1
Flávio de Carvalho (in collaboration with Raymond Frajmund)
Born 1899 in Barra Mansa, BR – died 1973 in Valinhos, BR
Flávio de Carvalho was a Brazilian artist, engineer, architect, writer, researcher, and inventor. He is mainly known for his Experiências (experiments, experiences, or life events), which were presented and justified by de Carvalho as heterodox scientific research experiments of prophylactic, reformist, progressive, and even utopian intention, actions that went far beyond art.
In fact, only one Experiência was actually named by the artist as such: Experiência no.2. This consisted of the artist defying a religious procession by walking against its flow, for which he was very nearly lynched. He subsequently published a richly illustrated book theorizing the incident. Throughout his lifetime, de Carvalho devised many events following the same principles of Experiência no.2. The most famous and scandalous was the 1956 public parade in which he launched a male miniskirt, which he had invented after years of writing about the different histories and developments of clothing and garments. Other examples are the premiere of his play Bailado do deus morto [Dance of the Dead God], which, like the opening of his first solo art exhibition, was shut down by police; his 1934 ethnographic trip to Europe narrated in his book Ossos do mundo [Bones of the World]; or, decades later, his failed expedition to the Amazon to shoot a film.
All of these actions involved visuality and writing, breaking taboos, and resisting power structures. Through radical self-exposure they aimed at provoking surprise, shock, or anger in public opinion (actively using and manipulating press and media to achieve this). For the artist, who thought of his Experiências as part of his critique of painting—forming what he called “new plastic poems”—they represented a way to reveal the deep emotions and dynamics of the human mind and/or society as linked to traumas acquired during the evolutionary process of the human species.
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