From May 31 to September 17, 2022, Claudia Jaguaribe held the exhibition No Jardim de Lina at Instituto Figueiredo Ferraz. Institution where Claudia also has works in its collection.
From Claudia to Lina, the image of an in-between place
"It was therefore sought to place the house in nature, participating in the 'dangers' without worrying about the usual 'protections'; the house, in fact, has no parapets." *
Without an objective intention, exploring a house - understanding its territorial location, finding the oppositions between interior and exterior, identifying the limits between construction and nature, peering into its most hidden corners, among other things - seems to be photographer Claudia Jaguaribe's initial step. At first glance, her work could be confused with architectural photography, but that's not what it's about. In its origins, it is a diverse, restless and open practice through which the artist formalizes narratives that are fissured from the real story in matter and image.
Unlike the totalizing and abstract agenda of modern architecture, Claudia places herself at a distinct pole, drawing on the perception that the place is crossed by the scars of time and use. It is placed in the interim space of Lina's architecture, precisely because it finds another territory, sometimes oscillating, where ironically the house balances itself. It is in between that the residence actually oscillates between a crystalline box suspended on pilotis and, now, an almost cave dominated by nature. Precisely in the transitional space between these two conditions, Claudia creates a photographic in-between.
Between day and night, in a suspended condition, a new environment of a fictional nature is constructed. In this ambience, the dichotomies of the place stand out, composed of the organic imponderable and the architectural solidity, and the details of a territory that suffers from the indelible marks of time; this whole impregnated by light and specific color tones. Certainly, everything in this place seems to touch a tonal spectrum between green and blue, variable depending on the incidence of light and the tones of nature and objects, in line with the micro-climate of the house.
In the book, this duality becomes clear. The selection and sequence of images insinuate a narrative that circumscribes this environment, denoting a fictional path in which contrasts are accentuated, drama and sobriety coexist and the manual and the industrial complement each other. Even without the presence of the human figure in focus, its memory permeates the set of images arranged, after all, all of them were created in an intrinsic condition on a human scale, therefore, in the eyes of those who explore and adventure. Intentionally, the photographer does not allow this scalar notion to be lost sight of, surgically varying the approaches and distances of the view.
65 years after the construction of the Morumbi Residence, an expression that the architect uses to title her text in Habitat magazine and, consequently, name the house, photographer Cláudia Jaguaribe seems to have rescued and reconciled in her images Lina Bo Bardi's initial premise that, through architecture – design and construction, intended "communion between nature and the natural order of things, opposing the least number of defense elements to the natural elements"*. It is in this risk of approximation, in this zone of opposition of things, right where there is no parapet or curtain, that the poetic ballasts of these two women inventors confabulate.
* BARDI, Lina Bo. Residence in Morumbi, In GRINOVER, Marina; RUBINO, Silvana (org.). Lina in writing: texts chosen by Lina Bo Bardi. São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2009. p. 80.
Diego Matos
Researcher and curator
