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Trabalho, 2013-2016

                 
                                  
             
              Trabalho (Work) consists of a series of negotiations carried out with the foremen and masons involved in the restoration of the old Light/Riachuelo/Eletropaulo energy substation in the city of São Paulo – a construction from 1926, today the cultural space Red Bull Station – related to the tools (shovel, shoehorn, makeshift wiring, straight crowbar, mason’s trowel, hacksaw, adze, pickax, maul, digger, pointed bar, iron bar bender, circular saw blade, hammer, handsaw, mowing, sickle) used in this restoration. In the midst of the process of these negotiations, unexpected donations and gifts on the part of the foremen and masons ended up occurring.

             Discussing the perhaps more invisible instances and layers that constitute Trabalho, it is important to highlight that it emerged in the first few weeks of work and within the scope of an “artistic residency” held in that building in the process of restoration. Therefore, at the beginning of the “residency”, the building was under construction, with more than one contractor/construction company working on it. In this process, my attention caught not only the number of people involved in the work, but also the movement and intensity of this work in the same week in which the group of artists participating in this edition of the “artistic residency” began it, which also began to work in the place designated for this practice.

             I then started to negotiate with them these tools that were being used in real time in the restoration. My work depended on their work. These were situations filled with conversations and subtle, respectful negotiations, as I could not get in the way and take up the workers' (precious) time, as they were in a real race against the clock, as the building would be inaugurated a week after the beginning of the “artistic residency”. Based on these assumptions, I started talking and negotiating with each of them. Most of the time, I was asked for a new tool in exchange for the one that was used, damaged, worn out, exfoliated, patched with tape and/or other fixings according to the contingency or circumstance.

            Some of the masons began to see that I was gathering a series of used tools in the studio and, restless and curious about my movement, they spontaneously made contact with me, even offering some of their tools. From a set of tools assembled up to the opening of the exhibition, I chose to prop them squarely on the wall, and arrange them based on a “drawing” with their blades facing a countless number of directions.

            The work also has something to offer, based on the presentation and arrangement of this meticulous collection of tools. Therefore, its title can allude both to the offering, as well as the verb conjugated in the first person singular in Portuguese, indicating an action that is still absent. It is a kind of testimony of absence. I had been wanting to do work for a while that questioned the layers of the idea of ​​work and the expression “work of art”. Furthermore, it is as if Trabalho left the question suspended: where is the work?

Thiago Honório, November 2013.