Pablo Lobato / Corda
Oct 09 – Dec 06, 2014
Cirio de Nazaré, held in Belém (Brazil) since 1793, is one of the biggest Catholic processions in the world honouring the Virgin Mary of Nazareth, the patron saint of the state. Each year millions of pilgrims accompany the saint’s statue and compete for the privilege of holding the long rope that leads the carriage throughout the city streets. In disarray with the rules of the celebration, and in order to assure their relics, some devoters cut the rope in the middle of the ritual.
The video brings two different fluxes closer: one linear, guided by the entirety of the rope, the other chaotic, responding to the cut.
Pablo Lobato (Brazil, 1976) works with different medias such as cinema, photography, installation, site specific and object. He was one of the creators of Teia – a center for audiovisual research and production headquartered in Belo Horizonte, since 2002. He directed the feature film Acidente, awarded as best Ibero-American Doc in Guadalajara/Mexico, 2007. Lobato was granted a fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation/New York, 2009; he has participated in Panorama da Arte Brasileira, 2011; and Sharjah Biennial, 2013. His work has been shown in film festivals such as Sundance, Locarno, Rotterdam, as well as at art institutions as MAM (São Paulo’s Modern Art Museum), MoMA (New York), The Tamayo Museum of Contemporary Art (Mexico City), Akademie der Kunst (Berlin), and the New Museum (New York), among others.