From the series Vidência, 2025
Vidência [Clairvoyance] can be taken and/or understood as a transitional work between the Vista relief (2020-23) and the Study for Visto series of drawings (2023-24). It is formed by a pair of glass eyes originally produced for religious image (called “roca”) or wearable saints, wrapped and affixed to a carved pink cedar wooden relief. The arabesque design of this relief was inspired by the carvings of Minas Gerais Baroque architecture and ornamentation.
The title Clairvoyance brings the idea of an expanded ability to see – so often attributed to the vision of the saint, the artist, the magician, the witch, the gypsy, etc. – as a kind of faculty endowed with supernatural powers in its mystical dimension, a presupposed gift, the ability to see what is beyond physical reach, the perception of what is hidden.
The work evokes the presence of a masked body in architecture, it is openly installed on a wall at the eye level of a spectator of medium height, establishing a vis-à-vis relationship with it and, as in the case of the other works mentioned above, blurring the relationship between who sees and who is seen, who looks and who is looked at, whether the eye is on the side of the work or the observer.
Thiago Honório, February 2025.
Work Details
From the series Vidência [Clairvoyance], 2025
Glass eyes for “roca” and/or clothing saints; pink cedar; aluminium
16 x 17 x 13,5 cm
photo: Edouard Fraipont