Ágora: OcaTaperaTerreiro, 2016

Bené Fonteles
1953, Bragança, Pará, Brazil. Lives in Brasília, Brazil

Marked by an interest in rituals, Bené Fonteles’ artistic productions include installations, sculptures and manifestos that are in dialogue with environmental issues, popular knowledge, and the desire to merge the ‘Brazilian being’ and the ‘universal being’. Since the 1970s, Fonteles has undertaken trans-disciplinary projects that go beyond art boundaries, calling himself an ‘artivist’. Ágora: OcaTaperaTerreiro (2016) gathers important traces of his trajectory, such as symbolic syncretism and co-creation. Inside the Bienal Pavilion, Fonteles proposes a thatched roof building with taipa [clay] walls, material typically used in indigenous and caboclo housing. The title of the work carries the desire to merge many times and knowledges, having the terreiro as a reference for a place for celebrations and offerings. The installation includes compositions of organic materials, remnants from the sea, traditional artifacts and objects collected by Fonteles during his journeys through different regions of the country. Textures, sounds and smells constitute the space that harbors exchanges between artists, musicians, shamans, educators and the public by means of a continuous program. The terreiro and the practices developed in it are an invitation for everyone to act on the transmutation of reality and the re-enchantment of the world.