Individual exhibition
Chicago Cultural Center
Chicago
photo collages and sculptures

 

 

A SEDUCTIVE PORTRAIT OF THE BRAZILIAN SOUL

 

“In her lush photo-collages, Milan has composed a seductive portrait of the Brazilian soul, usually so obscured by ordinary labels and definitions,” says cultural journalist and influential publisher Lívia Pedreira. On a recent visit to Milan’s studio Pedreira discovered a lush and resonant body of work that has been twenty years in the making—work that is an eye-opener, says Pedreira, because it goes so far beyond outmoded “touristical” evocations of Brazil.

“Her compositions are multifaceted like crystals,” says Pedreira, “reflecting the profusion today’s of traditions and innovations, unities and diversities, myths and dreams. And crystals themselves are a key element in Milan’s work, which borrows from the nature of stone in order to mirror the mystery of Brazil and its people—sometimes depicted shrouded in clouds of gold, sometimes framed by breathtaking tropical colors.”

 

THE CULMINATING WORK OF TWO DECADES

Working from a deeply humanistic tradition for over twenty years—as an ecological and arts education activist, as well as an artist—Denise Milan has been making sculptures, photographic installations and performances that draw actively from her experiences living with and interviewing people in the Brazilian coastal villages of Paraty and the dry desolate lands of Bahia in Brazil’s northeast.

Denise Milan: Mist of the Earth is the culmination of past experience and the embodiment of the artist’s ongoing concerns—as much a testament to a troubling legacy of colonization, the enslavement of African peoples, and the despoilment of whole regions, as to the more life-asserting side of Brazil, its breathless beauty, sensuous earthiness, and ravishing mysticism. Three photographs by Denise Milan: Pedra Brasile, Ancestral, and Estrela.

 

A SHOW IN THREE PARTS: PARADISE / PARADISE LOST

/ PARADISE REGAINED

Milan’s exhibition at the Chicago Cultural Center will be installed in three thematic zones: “Paradise,” “Paradise Lost,” and “Paradise Regained.

“Paradise,” the first zone, brims with photographic collages that playfully conjure a verdant natural world of abundance and exuberance, inhabited by real-world friends of the artist as well as by mythical creatures. Brazilian colors and iconographies proliferate joyously here, with primal force that draws energy from the Earth and flowers into the myths and mysteries of human existence.

The photo-collages in “Paradise Lost” depict an Earth that has been torn, despoiled. In this zone, the torment of the people—whose history incorporates abduction from Africa and enslavement—parallels the ravages of the land—the wanton quarrying and deforestation of their region of Bahia. Commanding the center of this part of exhibition is a large bronze sculpture in the form of a disc, beaten and weathered, looking like nothing so much as a huge, used coin—perhaps token payment for the theft of land and lives? This portion of the exhibition draws from a recent eco-activist initiative that turned into a national movement, in which Denise Milan helped spare a treasured Bahian mountain of green quartz from quarrying and turn it into a national historic treasure.

“Paradise Regained,” the exhibition’s third zone, asserts the possibility of hope amidst and after the dark. Here, Milan summons optimism about reversing the losses of nature and humanity, and finding new understandings among peoples, lands, governments, and commercial interests. Displayed in this zone are monochrome and silver collages and sculptures of imaginary crystalline flowers, suggesting a new, more harmonic existence on Earth. The installation invites the public to share in the possibility of cathartic integration.