Gentle Wall project

Street in Saara neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro

Saara, a district in downtown Rio de Janeiro, covering 11 streets, is heading slowly towards gentrification. For now, since long neglected houses offer the ideal background for the oldest trade, liquor and beer bars dominate street corners, vendors mingle with hurrying passers-by. When deep darkness sets in, it becomes a no-go-area for unaffiliated people. The pavements close up, but glimpses of light emerge from behind tin shutters. 

Streetcorner in Saara neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro

During bright daylight, streets in this neighbourhood hold a sea of objects, displayed inside shops, in windows and on tables gushing with the best from China, a geyser of colours, forms, functionalities and odours. The ambience is enriched with countless tongues, a global interface sheds light on the moves of a timeless worldwide migration, leaving scattered traces. 

Streetcorner in Saara neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro

If it were not already a perfectly multi-layered, orchestrated intervention somebody would have to invent it. It is re-invented, within a clearly defined frame: the firebreak wall of a two-storey building hosting a gallery is turned into a canvas. Spatial reliefs accelerate the contextuality in supplementary wall texts. As the material and symbolic needs of people literally spill into the streets, A Gentil Carioca turns the inside out, visualising metaphors of imaginations and comments on communal lives. 

Streetcorner in Saara neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro

The wall works find their privacy on a street corner, next to an abandoned house, facing other colonial-style buildings, some under renovation; a stone’s throw away from the Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, a 19th century neoclassical sandstone building, opposite a refurbished newly opened multimedia art factory and a 2 floor gallery round the corner. In a first attempt to overlook it, the Gentle Wall project reveals itself in the shadow of the environment, chameleon-like emerging from the profane. 

Streetcorner in Saara neighbourhood, Rio de Janeiro

Every four months a new subjective manifestation reflects pictorially transformed ideas in a public area. Applied in immediate proximity to anonymous graffiti of all thoughts the writings on the wall open a chapter incorporating random discoverers with the works. In reference to the power and the effect of a visual culture, be it traditional, commercial, generated by fantasy and, or experience, the artworks, that are especially created for this frame, become part of the visual memory, including written words. Consequently, an unofficial canon, juxtaposed by 11 million adult illiterates out of a 190 million citizens in a country as big as Europe. 

September 2010, artist: Thiago Rocha Pitta, title: Iron Cloud/Oxide Rain, sponsor: colecao particular

The globally recognisable illustrative styles relate to Brazilian art icons, and border-crossing artistic strategies alike. Individually, they indicate and stand for particular emotions, sentiments and form of expression to embrace and perceive the (their) world. 

4 February 2006 , artist: Dane Mitchell, title: Abrigo, sponsor: Gilberto Chateaubriand

At first glance hidden, an ingenious netting sustains a system of possibilities, generating unexpected refreshing encounters. Each wall work has its own sponsor to make production possible. The artworks tackle possession codes, embodied by the sponsor, which offers a piece in public space accessible for all to view.  

28 June 2008, artist: Carlos Garaicoa, title: Abstrações (aconteceu em outro lugar), sponsor: Luiz Augusto Teixeira de Freitas

The duration of a four months display makes the artwork somehow “immaterial”. It vanishes and can only be seen again as a reproduction or by telling words. Therefore, strongly connected to memory, in the scheme of (re-) production and in the scheme of consuming, it serves as a tool to open the gate to artists’ universes and their applied techniques/strategies.

Text by Rayelle Niemann, images 1-5 by Rayelle Niemann, Rio, September 2010; all other images by A Gentil Carioca, Rio de Janeiro

Detailed information of the Gentle Wall project can be found on the pdf documentation
 

19 August 2006 , artist: Marinho , title: Sem título, sponsor: Ted G. Decker, Phoenix, Arizona, USA

25 November 2006, artists: Botner e Pedro , title: Parede Cega, sponsors: Andréa e José Olympio Pereira

28 April 2007, artist: Guga Ferraz , title: Cidade Dormitório, sponsor: Felipe Wright

28 August 2007, artist: Carlos Contente, title: Hit Parede, sponsor: Mariano Marcondes Ferraz

July 2009, artist: Tiago e Gabriel Primo , sponsore: Selmo and Genny

The Blind Transmitter Mensagem de un Cego, a poem by Gil Coelha, a neighbourhood store owner, hosting live concerts every Thursday,
tints the neighbourhood distinctively, as vernacular excitements and attractions mark the visual.

FEATURED THEME ON CITY SHARING

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