Parking
Intervention into the public space, in order to facilitate alternative public spatial practices.
As a result therof, social and communal activities transpired, networking previously isolated individuals into a network of participants.
Rafael Abreu-Canedo: BIO
Born 1984, Brasil.
In 1994, my family immigrated to the US: where school teachers talked in a mysterious language. Not understanding them, I scribbled school-days away. As I began to learn English, haha… By then, too late: I had already mastered bubble-letters, and my caricatures were beginning to compel me. In my confusion, art found me instead. And so, I make the best of it.
As an artist, I follow in the wake of artists who, particularly since the seventies, have questioned the formalism of established languages, renewed an awareness of art’s political role (in a broad sense), and had their actions pervade the social space.
It’s far too academic for me to try to speak about or for the world. That’s too much noun and not enough verb. So through the use of sculpture, installation, performance, video and photography, I create encounters for viewers to experience, in a visceral way, the often elusive abstractions that shape our lives.
In this kind of existential approach, feelings are the only facts. Consequently, my most successful artworks tap into these "facts", through a seemingly ready-made network--or palimpsest--of personal/collective memories and mythologies, the residues of which are fossilized into materials and practices.
My body of work shifts across different media. But if I had to use one word to sum it all up, I would say "voice". Not only me having a voice, but through my artwork, giving voice to the elusive abstractions and systems that shape our lives. Whether that means inviting people to an event where everyone is hearing each other's actual heartbeats, simultaneously and in real-time as they socialize, or a large greek pillar, constantly wobbling, threatening to fall on those around it.
And even though it's tempting to speak about my body of work in terms of Arte Povera, Minimalism, Street Art, Brasilian Concretism and/or 70's performance art, experiencing it renders explanations, reproductions and even this website, mischievously superfluous.
Through an open-ended approach to art, I explore issues of language, behavior and identity, with focus on systems, the body and space. I've exhibited and taught throughout the US, having my first 2-person exhibition in 2001 at the age of 16. Since then, I have worked with organizations such as Oakland Unified School District, New York Department of Education, Pittsburgh Public Schools, Sprout Fund, Root Division, the New New Yorkers Program at the Queens Museum of Art, Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and Franklin Furnace, developing a commitment to communication through the arts; changing the future by working for a better today.
