I thought this image from the upcoming Lygia Pape show at Hauser & Wirth LA opening this weekend was apt for Earth Day.
Like Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, more or less her contemporary, Lygia Pape found in the indigenous populations of Brazil a new way of aligning her practice. Though a member of the Concrete and then Neo Concrete movements in Brazil which favored the primacy of the viewer and interaction with a work of art, there is some Surrealism and even Pop in Pape's work. The body and its intersection with geometry is apparent in her later, more three dimensional work.
The Tumpinamba tribe which used red feathers in tribal ceremonies, apparently devoured their captives not for sustenance but to absorb the spiritual capacities of the "other". Pape seems to have absorbed other cultures in the same way, digesting them to see how others interpreted the world.
This red-feathered ball with the hand reaching out from inside, reminded me somehow of the old Negro Spiritual, "He's got the whole world in his hands." Only this time, SHES got the whole world in her hands. I look forward to seeing the show.
Memoria Tupinamba 2000 courtesy Projeto Lydia Pape and Hauser & Wirth
