Cards on the Table | Sara Ramo

Sara Ramo
From February 1st to May 31st, 2020

 

 

Sara Ramo’s exhibition Cartas sobre la mesa (Cards on the Table) presents sculptures, collages and interventions which, inspired by the Theatre of the Absurd, evoke with critical eye the structures that have conducted and still conduct Brazil’s and the World’s current social and political tensions.

The work that lends its title to the show is a series of ten collages made with fabric, pigment, and sewing that are strongly related to celebratory banners. Three of these pieces are part of the exhibition, such as lost cards drawn from a guessing game. When combined, the titles of each collage constitute a kind of poem or carnival march.

 

CARDS ON THE TABLE 

  1. To everyone’s faith, my mirror 
  2. To this land’s daughters and sons 
  3. Not such placid borders 
  4. There are untold stories 
  5. The emperor has no clothes 
  6. Silver spoons 
  7. Profit is not all there is 
  8. Celebrating matters 
  9. Joy moves us 
  10. Save the delusional dream! 

 

The issues presented by this political-poetic deck of cards pervades the exhibition’s atmosphere. In Contrato social (Social Contract), the artist balances fake stones on various types of metal rods while a real stone lies near the set, dropped on the floor. Detrito-origem (Detritus- Inception), are fake stones made of clay, soil, cement and encrusted money bills. The artist creates a geology of desire through a consumption bias here: the way money is ontologically structured in our experiences and relationships.

This interest in creating earthy and stagecrafted trails is reflected in the pieces Evidência and Buraco negro (Evidence and Black Hole). Whether in the former the artist brings about the verticalization of the ground – a soil made triangle shifted on the wall –, in the latter the action is reversed: Sara opens a cavernous hole in the wall, arousing curiosity and repulsion.