Brazil

Jonathas de Andrade bases his work on his profound interest in an authentically “popular” culture. The installation is linked together by an index of idiomatic expres- sions and sayings involving human body metaphors along with a series of artworks that materialise the extraordinary poetic charge of those sayings, making them tangible. Two huge ears placed at the pavilion’s entrance and exit allude to the popular expression Entrar por um ouvido e sair pelo outro, allowing the visitors to go “in one ear and out the other,” while an inflatable balloon, which invades the space at various moments during the day, refers to the expression: Coração saindo pela boca (the heart coming out of the mouth). Altogether, the artworks constitute a partial and allusive – but powerfully physical – index of the sensations experienced by an imaginary Brazilian body, translated into simple and sometimes funny expressions, but which nevertheless capture and convey the historical moment in which we are living, in all its complexity.