> DESCRIPTION
05.02 - 05.31.2008
Zafos
Xagoraris, AVENIDA RIO BRANCO: THE SOUND OF ACRE, sound installation,
2007, 27th Sao Paulo Biennial, How to live together (Lisette Lagnado,
Adriano Pedrosa, Christina Freire, Jose Roca, Rosa Martinez and Jochen
Volz)
Zafos Xagoraris: THE SOUND OF ACRE
drawings, paintings, multimedia
Opening reception
Friday, May 2, 2008
5 - 9 pm
AVENIDA RIO BRANCO: THE SOUND OF ACRE is a sound installation created
by Zafos Xagoraris for The 27th Sao Paulo Biennial. This public
installation is expanding the range of Acre, bringing sounds of this
area of the Amazon region to the center of the largest city of Brazil.
Xagoraris's paintings and sound installations are based on
his practice of recording and later broadcasting the silence of
Cyprus's villages that were abandoned after the partition of the island
between Turks and Greeks. His works represent absence and displacement
through a poetic accumulation of images and concepts that span human
history from the ancient to digital times. Xagoraris took part in the
project Paradigmata, representing Greece in the 9th Venice Biennale of
Architecture, and in The 27th Sao Paulo Biennial in Brazil. He lives
and works in Athens, Greece.
Zafos Xagoraris about The Sound of Acre
April 2006: When I found out that my
proposal has been accepted by the curatorial team of the 27th Biennial
with the title Como viver junto, How to live together (Lisette Lagnado,
Adriano Pedrosa, Christina Freire, Jose Roca, Rosa Martinez and Jochen
Volz), I traveled from Athens to Rio Branco, the small city, capital of
Acre. Today the remote jungle of Acre is a Brazilian state at the
north-west bordering with Bolivia and Peru. However, before 1902 it
used to be part of first Bolivia and then an autonomous country. Acre
is famous for the resistance of its people against the destruction of
the forests and the struggle of the rubber tappers and their leader,
Chico Mendes, received international attention.
Just after my arrival at Rio Branco, I met Samarah Lopes and Gesileu
Salvatore who helped me to enter the jungle of Amazon. Driving south
from the capital to the village of Xapuri (...) we turned to the west,
into the forest (...) Some members of the community, friends of Samarah
and Gesileu, helped us to follow the pathways that the rubber tappers
follow deep inside the jungle. The acoustic conditions were like being
indoors and all sounds seemed really loud in this shady, humid and hot
environment, which was covered by trees. I recorded sounds of birds,
the wind and the rain and I edited them together with voices and songs
or programs of the local radio station, called Aldeia FM, in order to
produce a compilation representative of the whole area. These sounds
are symbols of Acre and when transmitted, they can expand the limits of
the area in an immaterial way.
September 2006: In the noisy, commercial center of Sao Paulo there is a
street called after the capital of Acre, Avenida Rio Branco. This
street is the place I selected to install The sound of Acre(....) As
far as I know, until this moment, almost a year after the event, the
people use the installations, only instead of playing my CDs they hear
radio stations or their own music. The loudspeakers were attached on
movable metal bases, in such a way that the people of the shops could
rearrange their position or protect them during the closing hours. The
sounds of Acre were audible simultaneously with the noises of the city;
the car engines or the different conversations and the flags were in
the middle of many other visual signs.
This way the residents or the visitors, the audience of these minimal
installations, could only conceive their existence one by one,
discovering them as they walked through the street. This sonorous flag
decoration of the Avenida Rio Branco created a feast and the accidental
strolls of passers-by some kind of parade dedicated to Acre.
Project Room
05.02 - 05.31.2008

Deborah Boardman, Heraldic Emblem I-IV, 2007, mixed media on wooden panel; Lorraine Peltz, Stardust, 2007,oil on canvas.
Deborah Boardman, Lorraine Peltz: PLACE/OBJECT
Place and Object have long been provocative subjects for artists.
Whether as subject matter that is observed and recorded, as in the case
of Deborah Boardman, or in a metaphorical way, as signifier and
conveyer of memory and recollections as in the paintings and drawings
of Lorraine Peltz, they function as opportunity for reflection on time,
past or present, and are containers that hold and reveal hopes and
desires.
This exhibition presents Deborah Boardman's Emblems, which mark space
with the physical presence of an object, and Lorraine Peltz's
paintings from her Chandeliers, Starbursts, etc. series, which propose
symbolic meanings in objects. Lorraine Peltz and Deborah Boardman are
represented by Koscielak Gallery in Chicago and Europe. Both artists
are Chicago-based and teach at the School of The Art Institute of
Chicago.