Following the success of its exhibitions Inside (Paço das Artes, Brazil, 2008) and Transitions/Transiciones (Centro Cultural de Lima, Peru, 2008) as well as several collaborations with these two countries in previous years, Le Groupe Molior is now showing an exhibition of works by Peruvian and Brazilian artists in two locations in Montreal: OBORO and the Maison de la culture Marie-Uguay.
Three young curators – Miguel Zegarra (Lima), Kiki Mazzucchelli (São Paulo) and Julie Bélisle (Montreal) – have selected eight artworks by new media artists from Peru and Brazil around the theme of restraint and its controlling effects on everyday life in these two South American countries.
The focus of this exhibition is to show what the Brazilian and Peruvian contexts, in their cultural, social, and political aspects, have in common regarding the use of media technologies. Lima, the capital of Peru, represents a new paradigm of modernity marked by paradox: chaos, poverty, mass access to technology, pirated technological products, historical buildings recycled into modern ones. All the signs of Peru’s socio-economic complexity are concentrated here. São Paulo is Brazil’s financial and business centre, a place where extremes of poverty and wealth co-exist. What these two cities have in common, and what is reflected in this exhibition, is the co-existence of paradoxical situations where the forces of modernity and precariousness are constantly at play.