paulagabriela / Galeria Leme, Brazil
Camila Perez
Since the 1960s, many of the innovations of contemporary art, both theoretical and practical, have been indebted to feminist concerns–deconstructing traditional gender stereotypes, reclaiming images of the female body, raising consciousness. The emerging art had ideas about intersections of gender, ethnicity and class, composing a lens to view new identity, offering the possibility of the unfathomable.
As with many female artists before them (Judy Chicago, Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, Tracy Emin), the duo Paula Boechat and Gabriela Moraes’ work is highly confessional. For the past eight years they have been working together under a fused identity, paulagabriela. Their work consists of tracing a symbolic experience of union shared between them in painting, sculpture, performance, video, installation and photography, examining connection, disconnection and multiplicity.
Paulagabriela brings their own context to art, viewing it through a very personal lens. Their identities overlap and inform each other, examining the tension between the two. Ricardo Levins Morales, in his essay entitled "The Importance of Being Artist, says: "What comes naturally to the artist is exposing the most private dreams to the sunlight." Every artist creates his or her own vocabulary, a microcosm where motifs appear and re-appear, revealing certain obsessions. For paulagabriela, fusion is at the core.
Separation of spirit from matter is a mystery, the union of spirit with matter yet another. Paulagabriela examines the essential paradox of human experience, that of a mind and body duality. Flesh or fantasy, scientific and romantic temperaments strangely blend.
Paulagabriela’s project for the Galeria Leme in Sao Paulo, Brasil is a representative illustration of their work. For the exhibition, the artists have created an installation on one of the gallery’s pierced walls. Using this surface as canvas, they "sew" through these perforations. Using red tubes, they penetrate the wall, and exceed the delineation of the space, forming a drawing of immense proportions.
Tubes, strings and pipes are always present in paulagabriela’s work, symbols used to suggest the union between the two artists. These instruments also become the means to link with the spectator, the means by which to communicate their self-representation and acknowledge a gaze.
Paulagabriela’s work is born of the urban experience and alienation, made evident in their series of photographs "Space in Between," also presented at the gallery. The photographs are shot in the early morning or evening sunlight. The artists are portrayed nude, wrapped in infinite red coil, each isolated in her own tube. The images are charged with tension, at once erotic and visceral, against the desolation of a glacial atmosphere.
In their video "Tube/Tunnel," paulagabriela are once again portrayed secluded, each running up and down her own tunnel continually. At one point, these images are superimposed implying the persistent endeavor to merge. In this form, a hybrid form of duality is developed, duality of flesh and spirit.
The element of ambiguity is an overwhelming characteristic of paulagabriela’s work. Nonetheless, their motivation rests not on artifice. It does not exist to confuse, trick or distort, but rather to intrigue, stimulate, open possibilities to explore. There are always two sides to a coin, a way in and a way out. Paulagabriela seeks to elaborate some new scheme of life, finding spiritualization in the senses, emulating nature in her bittersweet irony, by recreating life. Their union/connection represents life itself, the constant attempt to link soul and body, body and soul. Who can say where the fleshy impulse ceases or the psychical impulse begins? There are moments of mysterious savagery in the soul, as the body has moments of spirituality. Through natural conditions, perpetual union is impossible, hopeless, thus breeding only yearning.
