A serious exhibition devoted to Lygia Clark (1920-88), the Brazilian artist who within the Nineteen Sixties dramatically recalibrated the connection between artist and viewers, is now open at Whitechapel Gallery. Clark had a solo present at Alerts gallery in London in 1965, and has been included in numerous group exhibits, however that is the primary time she has been given a big solo present by a UK establishment.
The exhibition builds on the Whitechapel Gallery’s historical past of championing artists from all around the world and Latin America specifically, from Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti to Hélio Oiticica, Tunga and Alfredo Jaar. From its beginnings in 1901, “the gallery has been domestically embedded however globally related”, says the director Gilane Tawadros.
The exhibition spans the mid Nineteen Fifties to the early Seventies—among the most repressive years of Brazil’s army dictatorship—when Clark hung out in Paris, returning to Rio de Janeiro completely in 1976. The interval coincides along with her transfer away from geometric abstraction in direction of a better deal with sensory expertise and on closing the hole between work and viewers. By the tip of her life, Tawadros says, “she noticed it as a type of remedy, a type of therapeutic”.
The present takes its title from considered one of Clark’s most experimental works, The I and the You (1967), a piece that she termed a “proposal”, to sign its state of incompleteness. The work turns into full when two individuals work together whereas sporting Clark’s specifically designed fits, which cowl their eyes and join them by a type of umbilical wire. The fits are lined with supplies together with foam, water and rubber, which the contributors can discover by opening numerous pockets.
Clark with considered one of her Bicho sculptures in Rio de Janeiro. The Bichos are hinged varieties designed to be manipulated
Courtesy Associacão Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark
The work alerts a mind-set about artwork that, Tawadros says, “speaks to this second, now, to generations of artists and audiences who’re fascinated about these questions of how we’re on the planet, how we relate to one another at a time once we are taking a look at one another’s separateness and distinction relatively than the factors that join us to one another as human beings.”
Generational connections
To make the purpose, the British artist Sonia Boyce’s exhibition An Awkward Relation (till 12 January 2025) runs alongside and in dialogue with the Clark present, which she has co-curated with Tawadros and the Anglo-Brazilian artwork scholar Michael Asbury.
Boyce obtained to identified Clark’s work within the Nineteen Nineties, and the pairing emphasises not solely their connection throughout generations and geography but in addition their shared journey from two-dimensional works to three-dimensional objects, to works which are “about participation, contact, interplay, engagement”, Tawadros says.
Clark’s works made after round 1960 current a big problem to curators, since they don’t absolutely exist exterior the second during which they’re skilled. Replicas of The I and the You fits have been offered by the Associação Cultural Lygia Clark, and can be found for guests to put on; the gallery can also be screening a 2012 recreation of the work.
Works to be held and felt
Different items are just too fragile to be dealt with usually. A gap show of work and works on paper is adopted by examples of Bichos (beasts or critters), Clark’s intensive collection of hinged varieties comprised of wooden or steel, and designed to be held and manipulated by the viewer. Whereas the originals are displayed behind glass, replicas made with the authorisation of the artist’s property can be found for guests to the touch and work together with precisely as Clark supposed.
Lygia Clark, Bicho de Bolso, 1967Photograph Michel Desjardins. Courtesy of Associacão Cultural O Mundo de Lygia Clark
It’s a mark of Clark’s standing in Brazil that in 1971 the singer Caetano Veloso devoted a track to her, If You Maintain a Stone. It most likely refers to Stone and Air (1966), Clark’s first “sensorial object”, comprising an air-filled bag with a stone resting over one nook. Holding it between two fingers she squeezed the bag in time along with her respiratory, making the stone transfer out and in, a manifestation of the interior workings of her physique.
Comparable works, utilizing plastic baggage, paper, seeds, fruit netting and glue to focus and specific bodily expertise, dominated the Nineteen Sixties and led to participatory group work that Clark developed following her time in Paris throughout the Might 1968 protests. Performances of Corpo Coletivo (1970) and Elastic Web (1974) can be “activated” on Saturdays all through the exhibition’s run.
Greater than most, the exhibition requires the reminiscences of those that knew and labored with Clark. “It will probably by no means be the identical as when the work is activated by a residing artist, however we’re going to try to be as true as we will,” Tawadros says.
Lygia Clark: The I and the You, Whitechapel Gallery, London, till 12 January 2025
