Rodrigo Braga (Manaus, 1976) works with performance actions and manual constructions carried out in natural landscapes or in relation to nature present in the urban space. The artist uses his own body sometimes to intervene in his surroundings and sometimes integrating himself to it. Existential and conflicting relationships between human beings and their environment are the subject matter of his practice. Rodrigo Braga's interest focuses on material elements and their broad symbolic meanings, addressing the difficult relationship between humanity and its controversial ways of creating systems of extraction, modification and induction of nature.
In 2012, the artist was selected for the São Paulo International Biennial. A year later, he exhibited the work Tônus at MoMA PS1 Cinema in New York. In 2016, he held a solo show at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He received some of the biggest awards for contemporary art in Brazil, such as the PIPA Award and the MASP Award for Emerging Talent. Rodrigo Braga has works in large institutional collections in Brazil and abroad, such as MAM-SP, MAM-RJ and Maison Européenne de La Photographie (Paris).
Main solo shows: Internal see, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); Image Agriculture, SESC Belenzinho, São Paulo (2014); Tônus - MASP 2013 Award [Emerging Artist], Art Museum of São Paulo (2013). Main group shows: My land has palm trees, Caixa Cultural, São Paulo (2019); Past/future/present: contemporary Brazilian art in the MAM collection, São Paulo (2019); Horizons: landscape in the MAM collections, Rio de Janeiro (2018); Ways of seeing Brazil: Itaú Cultural 30 years, OCA, São Paulo (2017); 30th São Paulo international Biennial, Biennial Pavilion, São Paulo (2012); In Praise of vertigo: photographs from the Itaú - Maison Européenne de La Photographie collection – MEP, Paris (2012).
///
“Ponto Zero” is a series in process since 2018, between Brazil, Portugal and France. It is being carried out with performance actions, environmental interventions, photographs, videos, installations and drawings. The series promotes the parallel between the human being and the mineral being, contrasting two completely different temporal scales: historical time and geological time. The idea of opposites that they did not find is used here as a metaphor, and takes shape with the contrasts between white and black, right and left, strength and fragility, flesh and rock. “We recognized the caves, the holds of slave ships or the interior of the charcoal works, but, paradoxically, we didn't bother to carbonize our history. We thus observe our most barbaric origins, as we soon assume our most animal archetypes. We plaster our feelings and intelligences. We go back to carrying, or being, stones. Stone as an origin, as man's return to his zero point”, reflects the artist.
