A tree-lined path conceived by Luiz Zerbini and a forest within the museum walls: an exhibition by Triennale di Milano and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain
The path conceived for Triennale Milano: Luiz Zerbini brought plants and sky into a room
Indigenous and non-indigenous artists meet in a transcendental path conceived by Zerbini inside the Triennale Milano
Fondation Cartier’s commitment in bringing together a range of artists of indigenous and non-indigenous origin, hybridizing their visions and modes of expression, stands as a starting point for Siamo Foresta (from the 22nd of June to the 29th of October 2023 at Triennale Milano). The exhibition, which features Bruce Albert, anthropologist, and Hervé Chandès, Artistic Managing Director of Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, as artistic directors, aims to investigate the connection between human beings and the forest.
Representing in a dreamlike vision and globally this relationship is artist Luiz Zerbini, who for the first time officially took charge of the exhibition design. For this new experience, Luiz Zerbini invited the architect Juliana Ziebell to collaborate with him in the design of Siamo Foresta. Ziebell and Zerbini had already worked together for his solo show at MASP (Museu de arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand), in 2022.
Implementing plants within the exhibition space was definitely one of the main ideas, the artist emphasizes, with respect to the planning of the building that also offered interesting skylights. Another element in Zerbini’s vision is the use of light, in this case sunlight directly, which is employed in shaping the architecture and the area populated by the shrubs. «This totally changes the space and makes me feel confident in trying to face this challenge also considering the continuous lifecycle of the plants, which today are this way and tomorrow will change», he points out.
The conception of Siamo Foresta set design by Luiz Zerbini – the partnership between Fondation Cartier and Triennale Milano
Zerbini explains how, as a contemporary artist, he had to invent a way of displaying his own works during personal exhibitions and how the botanical aspect is fundamental in his pieces. The partnership with the Fondation Cartier, which has been going on for several years now, allowed his work to materialize in imagining an overall vision that could unite the artworks involved in Siamo Foresta.
The common theme chosen by Fondation Cartier is the need to re-imagine humanity’s role in the universe of the living. This was the starting point for Luiz Zerbini to devise his urban forest in which to immerse the works of the different artists. The orchestration of this exhibition, Zerbini tells, started from the conceptualization of his vision for the project proposed by Fondation Cartier. Although he was not aware of every artwork on display, the final surprise was to see how the works were perfectly positioned in this context, in a dialogue between artists from the city and from the forest.
The scenography implementation of Siamo Foresta
Amplifying the dreamlike effect of the installation Piccola Foresta Sognata created by Zerbini is the application of some colored filters, on the skylights above the space. The light seeped through these plays with the most varied species of plants, mainly tropical and sourced locally. This oneiric space is traversed by a walkway to allow the passage of the public, who find themselves dealing with the experience to be inside of Luiz Zerbini’s paintings, in which in addition to decaying elements of the plants themselves there is waste, human garbage. «It was like building a three-dimensional painting with the colors and plants that I am used to paint, and the white sand», the artist says.
Sky-like filters are used to make the sky enter the room and blur the line between outdoor and indoor. The result Zerbini wanted to achieve is that of an empty space, with real light that could potentially interact with the artists’ nature-focused works. In fact, in the state of conception what the Fondation Cartier sought was the artist’s vision in an overall sense and not focused on single artists.
The concept: rituality of the forest
Starting with the site where the exhibition would have been installed, Zerbini, shaping his vision of what a forest is, worked on his conceptualization of the theme. With respect to the forest, the artist points out, he represents it as a ritual, a sacred place where people live together according to certain rhythms and actions. The filtering of lights among the trees, in a dreamlike dimension, reminds him of the great cathedrals also similar in grandeur to the planted throng, Zerbini continues. The vision of space, conceived as a global work of art is manifested through the means of the forest, involving the individual artists. «I don’t believe in coincidence, but in the assemblage many things happened making the idea and concept suited also in the realization», the artist concludes.
Many of the personalities involved come from the forest. It is as if their works came together in the ritual created through the set design. Collaboration is a meeting of ideas where every time something new happens that cannot be controlled, as Luiz Zerbini remembers the quote by Jorge Luis Borges «All collaboration is mysterious», that is why it becomes so interesting, he explains. After the conceptualization there was then a confrontation with the artists to understand the feasibility of the project, the inclusion of their works, and their being preserved in relation to the living environment around them.
Siamo Foresta: the dialogue between artworks and forest
Although the entire exhibition space is immersed within this oneiric atmosphere of the forest imagined by Zerbini, some works in particular fit into a fairly direct contact with plants. In Siamo Foresta, André Taniki’s drawings are placed within the forest in a version that is a facsimile of the original work, so as to preserve the pieces from moisture and possible degradation. For these drawings in particular, done in the 1970s and right in the middle of the Amazon with a color pen, it would have been risky to be placed in the context imagined by Zerbini. As for maintaining the plants in the exhibit, all of them will remain alive and there will be botanists and gardeners to care for them each week. Despite this, the idea of exploring during the months of the exhibition is also kept alive by the change that the different species will undergo and how this will interact with the artworks.
The public’s exploratory journey in Siamo Foresta
Within the exhibition, the public is free to wander, without the actual presence of a path or predetermined spaces. The essential elements that define its passage are the plants, along with some accessory creations such as walkways completely immersed in the realized urban forest. In terms of sequentiality, however, there is no rule other than that given by the experience of each visitor with respect to how he or she will want to enter this alternative universe. Also contributing to the composition of the path are the works, the paintings, often even of significant lengths, as if trying to restore order to the entirety of the forest.
This setting, the artist explains, is like an evolution of the previous installations he had already used for his works, with the conceptualization of the images coming out of the frames. «Even with the paintings I look at the world three-dimensionally, as in a landscape, and this is an integral part of my work and a consequence of my being an artist», Zerbini highlights. The only room in the exhibition is the cinema one, already present at Triennale, that is showing three movies in loop, made by six movie makers.
Luiz Zerbini is one of the featured artists of Siamo Foresta
Luiz Zerbini is also one of the featured artists in the show. Through his work he focused on plants and, often, on their encounter with living beings, so he exhibits for Siamo Foresta a series of pieces that already belonged to Fondation Cartier’s collection along with some important loans. Some of the works involved, the artist himself explains, were made through a monotype technique of pressing natural elements, particularly inked leaves, which imprinted their shapes, textures and sap on paper. Massacre de Haximu is another of the key pieces to understand the artist’s work and dialogue with the core value of the exhibition, it reminds about the serious issues regarding abusive exploitation of natural resources that could lead to environmental and humanitarian catastrophes.
The painting of the massacre of the Yanomami, indigenous people of Haximu, by Luiz Zerbini, 1993
This painting takes its cue from the 1993 massacre of the Yanomami, indigenous people of Haximu. Haximu is the name of a maloca, or community, which is located in the Yanomami indigenous land on the border of Brazil and Venezuela, near the Demini river in the state of Roraima. In 1993, a massacre motivated by the illegal exploitation of minerals, especially gold, took place and became known as the Haximu massacre. At least twelve indigenous people were murdered by miners, including elderly people and children – the Yanomami themselves reported a much larger number of people killed on this occasion. In Zerbini’s large painting, Massacre of Haximu (2020), the colorful nature of the region contrasts with the violent gesture of the miner to the left and the dead indigenous bodies in the center of the painting. With a background marked by Mount Roraima, the invader stands out with an immense machete in his hand, and, to the right, a hose from the suction pump used in the mining operation. To produce this work, Zerbini relied on numerous newspaper reports from the last 30 years of the Yanomami people’s struggle against the miners, as well as on the networks of local communicators, in particular the ISA (Socio-Environmental Institute) and the Hutukara, which constitute important weapons of information against illegal mining. During the execution of the painting, in 2020, the main person responsible for the Haximu massacre, Pedro Emiliano Garcia, sentenced to 20 years in prison for genocide, was arrested again in an operation against illegal mining in the region, revealing the importance of figuring and revealing not only the resistances, but also the enemies of the indigenous peoples.
Exemplifying the concept of Zerbini’s work, however, is the installation Natureza Espiritual da Realidade. Here can be found all the elements that he himself used in the setting of Siamo Foresta. A tree stands out in the center of this wooden construction that frames and contains several elements. From sand, to the play of light created with some colored slabs that let it filter through and interact with other objects. This piece, the artist continues, has been a work in progress until the acquisition of the Foundation; it is here that can be seen the interaction between living things and nature. On the different sections that have sand at their base are the very elements of plant decay, or bones of living beings found by Zerbini, or even waste of things used by humans and then discarded.
Luiz Zerbini
Luiz Zerbini (1959) was born in São Paulo and lives and works in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Over the course of his career, which spans more than three decades, Luiz Zerbini has developed a complex visual vocabulary that unfolds between figuration and abstraction. He is the set designer for the exhibition Siamo Foresta, from the 22nd of June to the 29th of October 2023 at Triennale Milano, which is organized by Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain.
