In these times when the limits/bonds between humans and non-humans have merited several discussions in different fields of knowledge, Iago Gouvêa brings to light, in his instigating exhibition Fístula, some incisive reflections on the issue.
When dealing, in the In vitro series, with the cruel reality of “laboratory” rats, the artist confronts, with his fictional experiments in ceramics, the scientific experiments that, under the aegis of human arrogance, are carried out with animals conventionally considered inferior in the hierarchy of the living. Armed with incisive inventiveness, he poetically arranges the ceramic rats in cold, aseptic spaces (typical of laboratories), where they appear deformed, dissected, melted, genetically manipulated and converted into objects. It thus highlights the extreme situation of these small rodents confined in an artificial environment, unsuitable for any dignified existence.
If they are seen as lives in vitro, mere inert bodies inside glass containers and in a state of debris, they also appear – in oblique ways – as porcelain trinkets to be used as controversial and perverse adornments. In other words, they oscillate paradoxically between the anomalous and the ornamental, the disposable and the usable. In any of these conditions, always reified.
The trinket dimension is reinforced in several pieces, such as those that present mice with parts of their bodies shaped like flowers, branches, wings and other devices, in an explicit irony of the “flowery speeches” that seek not only to disguise the violent practices of subjection of non-human animals, but also justifying them as essential for the well-being and survival of our species. As a result, the crystallized concepts of human and humanity are disfigured/reconfigured by the artist's critical gaze.
On the other hand, the vital dimension of these ceramic creatures is not entirely absent from the works. Some rats, especially those with eyes, seem to ask us for compassion, and the inertia of one or another is still permeated by a movement that is noticeable to those who refuse to see them as simple things. If the artist's irony denounces the coldness of laboratories, his empathy restores the dignity of these animals in the kaleidoscope of life.
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The Fístula exhibition took place between June 20th and August 6th, 2023 at the Piccola Galleria at Casa Fiat de Cultura, Belo Horizonte.
