the artists
UNHANDEIJARA LISBOA &
PAULO BRUSCKY
Unhandeijara Lisboa (1949-2020), or Nandi, artist, journalist, photographer, sculptor and engraver, was the founder of the Clube da Gravura da Paraíba. He was known as one of the greatest artists of popular wood engraving in Paraíba. He was the coordinator of the Arte para o Futuro (Art for the Future) Project, at UFPB from 1970 to 1980, worked as a photographer at the newspaper "A União", and taught graphic arts at Instituto Superior de Educação Artística do Governo da Paraíba.
Paulo Roberto Barbosa Bruscky (Recife, Pernambuco, 1949), a multimedia artist and poet, is one of the pioneers of Postal Art in Brazil, having organized two international exhibitions in Recife in 1975 and 1976 – the latter closed by the Brazilian military during the dictatorship period. Bruscky produces artists' films, video art, xerox-film, and video installations. He is one of the most innovative artists of contemporary art in Latin America. "As art critic Cristina Freire reminds us, postcard art constitutes a strategy of freedom in the face of the oppressive political context" (Itau Cultural).
PAULO BRUSCKY & UNHANDEIJARA LISBOA - “S.D.S.”
Medium: Postal Art
| Dimensions: 12,5 x 17 cm
| Year: 1977
ARTWORK FORMAL DESCRIPTION
Postcard with a black and white illustration printed. It shows stylized capital letters "S.D.S" separated by a dot. The two "S" have scratched textures, and the "D" has its shape filled with images of soldiers wearing masks.
THE ARTWORK
What is SDS? SDS is neither a conventional nor an official abbreviation. There is no single, exact meaning for SDS; it depends on the situation or the phrase's meaning. Thus, it may refer to greetings, longing, "só deus sabe" ("God only knows"), etc. SDS can appear at the end of non-formal letters and e-mails as a polite and respectful closing. In virtual means of communication - such as Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp - it is constantly used for "saudades" ("homesickness" and "nostalgia"), even though it is more common to have it abbreviated as "sdds" and not sds in this case. In Christian circles, it means "só Deus sabe" (" God only knows"); however, the spelling is "sDs" and not "sds" since the D stands for the word "Deus" ("God"), which should always initiate in capital letters for Christians.
FOR REFLECTION
What does this work have to tell us? The signs "S.D.S." and "masked soldiers" used by the artists invite us to reflect on the precariousness and sense of reclusion felt by the people prevented from moving freely due to the imposition of the virus, which contaminates people, leading to illness and often, to death. In 1977, the year of its creation (1977), it likely referred to the Military Dictatorship, to the masked soldiers who confronted public demonstrations with tear gas. Today, masks remind us of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forces us to wear masks to avoid contagion. The S.D.S. may have meant "Greetings", in an ironic sense, in the context of the Dictatorship; today, it can mean "nostalgia" for other times, or even "God only knows" what will happen tomorrow. In the present days, we continue to control our homesickness and nostalgia through calls and the internet to adapt to the "new normal", longing for better days, which will come soon!
TECHNIQUE - POSTAL ART
American artist Ray Johnson is considered the first artist of mail (or "postal") art, whose experiments began in 1943. Postal art - like Dadaism, Surrealism, and Russian Constructivism - has its roots in Italian Futurism (1910-20), "which strengthened the thought for a new way of perceiving art, which sought to escape from pre-established means". Artists of the 1960s absorbed that thought out of the need they felt to bring the population closer to the work of art.
Thus: "Arte Correio (Mail Art) emerged at a time when communication, despite the multiplicity of media, has become more difficult, while official art is, more and more, compromised by the speculation of the capitalist market, fleeing from an entire reality to benefit a few: bourgeois, art dealers, critics, and most of the galleries that exploit artists insatiably," Bruscky wrote in an original text from 1976, reprinted countless times and available on Canal Contemporâneo. "In Mail Art, art resumes its main functions: information, protest, and denunciation." (STRECKER, 2017).
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