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Tarsivaldo, 2017


 

                Tarsivaldo is a work made up of three facsimile editions of the book Pau Brasil, from 1925, by Oswald de Andrade (1890-1954), with cover and illustrations by Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973). “Tarsivaldo” was the way in which Mário de Andrade (1893-1945), a great exponent of Brazilian modernism, referred to Tarsila and Oswald.

                In Tarsivaldo, cuts were made in the core and cover of the three books starting from the strip where “Ordem e Progresso” (Order and Progress) would be written on the Brazilian flag – on the cover by Tarsila, the title of Oswald's book – deconstructing it and making holes in it. Tarsivaldo seeks to replace the violence and extortion of “colonial rape” problematized by this trio, Mário, Oswald and Tarsila, each in their own way.

                The book Pau Brasil, by Oswald de Andrade, had already been taken as a living matter for the making of another work I carried out in 2014, entitled Pau-Brasil, in this case, with a hyphen, in which a log of pau-brasil wood runs through its core.

Thiago Honório, July 2018.