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Penca, 2014-2017



 
                 Penca is a kind of arrangement made up of countless worn latex gloves tied together. These gloves – also recurrent in the vocabulary of household cleaning utensils and products – were used by different hands of different working professionals, namely: bricklayer, painter, painter's assistant, carpenter, restorer, doctor, plumber, domestic worker, teacher, visual artist, between orthers.

                It is possible to notice on the surface of the work perforated areas, spattered with paints, diverse substances and products, worn, stained and dirty areas, corroded surfaces in which varied uses, friction, movements and attrition are identified.  Sometimes, due to the subversion of these uses, they suffered reactions to the most diverse chemical agents used in different types of work.

                The union present in Penca also occurs on three planes: on the physical plane, in which the rubber gloves are, in fact, joined to each other; on the social plane, in which professionals from different areas of knowledge and social classes used the same gloves to carry out the same work; and on the symbolic plane. Penca's “arrangement” also evokes, through the colors of the rubber gloves and the pigmentation of the different residues on them, bunches, baubles, a grouping of fruits, flowers or leaves, as well as, from its almost diagrammatic drawing, a bizarre still life.

Thiago Honório, September 2014.