When reading Frieze magazine a couple of months ago, I came across an article on Valeska Soares and her influences.
A former architecture student in Brazil, she believes that the practice 'was more progressive and gave me access to important modern art movements, like the Bauhaus' rather than more classical fine art courses of the time. She discusses architecture as an emotional, poetic discipline. In my short time studying and researching architecture I can agree, as it seems such a beautiful thing being able to create spaces where humans feel, do and love.
A lot of Soares' works relate to literature, and she states that it 'helps me deal with the impossibility of reading all the literature in the world.' As artists/designers, we find the wealth of material and possible outcomes overwhelming. Working with written text is an interesting way to interpret your feelings towards something and really explore a text rather than finishing reading and closing the book. Her works on Roland Barthes A Lover's Discourse are particularly beautiful. She blocks out entire sections of the text to create powerful, fragmented poetry.
Barthes discusses further the fragility of the emotion of love. 'If you feel loved you will also feel abandoned at the same time.' Soares depicts this abandoned feeling in her work.
My glass chair, Conversation Piece (2010): if a couple actually sits in it, the work will shatter and they both will fall to the ground. No conversation.
Soares talks a lot about love, a topic which I always find inherently interesting in artworks - pieces made around raw human emotions.
Very little art today puts forth a politics of love, or of desire. Eroticism, even pornography, is considered acceptable – yet, love is one of the most transgressive subjects of all. When hate is a subject of our discourse – and we have a politics of gender, of race, of class – why should we not also have a politics of love?
https://frieze.com/article/my-influences-valeska-soares
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