Grupo Bijari started emerging as a collective in 1997 when students from the Architecture University of São Paulo joined to share a place and experiences from each one production in the field of art. In fact Grupo Bijari was only known as a group (and not as individual artists sharing one platform) when we were comissioned our first “job” which was in the field of art direction - a set design for a musical festival. So the group was essentially born as a “service production” group doing jobs as art directors like designing albums for musicians, creating set design for theatre or designing architectural projects for exhibitions. Only a couple of years after that, the group started creating “art” projects which we framed from the perspective of architects, urbanists and designers.
We naturally had the interest in the urban realm and the ways in which the city was configured and reshaped regarding the construction of identities, ideologies and aesthetical values. It was in the 2000 when the group started creating urban interventions meant to investigate, question and possibly interfere in the hegemonic narratives that conformed the city. The first project was freeing a chicken in 2 different spots, geographically close but culturally and economically very distinct and analysing how was the reaction from that alien element. Most of these projects were provocative, critical and very outsider and, at that point, never interested the realm of art and the art galleries which, in Brazil, are interested in formalist art and are very market oriented.
Though we never made our living from the money that arises from art commercialization, it was interesting for us to maintain complete autonomy from the impositions of that market. In fact we became our own sponsors because, holding a more commercial platform parallel to the artistic one enabled us to invest in our own projects. In the case of projects that needed bigger resources, Bijari and other art collectives gathered to write and submitted then to private or public cultural institutions. That was the case of “Action Zone” and “Cube” – projects that needed website, talks, guest groups and theoreticians and bigger audio visual equipment.
Something unusual also happened once. A commercial client (with whom we art directed for an educational game) sponsored an action that Bijari was planing to undertake when president Bush came to Brazil. We needed to create a big banner with the inscription “Molotov for yankee target” and unveil it when the convoy was passing by. So this guy found the idea interesting and put some money.
Sometimes it is not so easy for us to develop a discourse that in a way tries to unveil and criticize the maladies of the capitalism and parallel to it being part of the engine, and hashing it for productivity and performance and mastery which we do, being also in a commercial studio. But i have to say that we can share expertises from both areas. Video shooting and editing is one for example. Developping the ability to work in group is another. For good and for bad, in our case the group is the same.
Another issue is the status of being an artist in Brazil different from being an artist in Europe for example. The welfare state and all the facilities enables the European artist to be much more comfortable, being an “outsider artist”. In Brazil and in South America in general, being outsider is completely different. You have to face the not so comfortable situation of really being outside the system... No medical assistance, no transport, no education, no nothing. So sooner or later you have to face middle-class bourgeois needs, like having to feed a family, having to buy a car or to pay a medical insurance and you won´t be able to be so independent anymore.
So each case is different and in the case of Bijari this format is quite working because we are together since 1997 despite all the internal crisis and dilemmas, something that is not so common in Brazil for artist collectives that tend to be more ephemeral.
Group members: Eduardo Fernandes, Geandre Tomazone, Gustavo Godoy, Mauricio Brandão, Olavo Ekman and Rodrigo Araújo
20.05.2011
We naturally had the interest in the urban realm and the ways in which the city was configured and reshaped regarding the construction of identities, ideologies and aesthetical values. It was in the 2000 when the group started creating urban interventions meant to investigate, question and possibly interfere in the hegemonic narratives that conformed the city. The first project was freeing a chicken in 2 different spots, geographically close but culturally and economically very distinct and analysing how was the reaction from that alien element. Most of these projects were provocative, critical and very outsider and, at that point, never interested the realm of art and the art galleries which, in Brazil, are interested in formalist art and are very market oriented.
Though we never made our living from the money that arises from art commercialization, it was interesting for us to maintain complete autonomy from the impositions of that market. In fact we became our own sponsors because, holding a more commercial platform parallel to the artistic one enabled us to invest in our own projects. In the case of projects that needed bigger resources, Bijari and other art collectives gathered to write and submitted then to private or public cultural institutions. That was the case of “Action Zone” and “Cube” – projects that needed website, talks, guest groups and theoreticians and bigger audio visual equipment.
Something unusual also happened once. A commercial client (with whom we art directed for an educational game) sponsored an action that Bijari was planing to undertake when president Bush came to Brazil. We needed to create a big banner with the inscription “Molotov for yankee target” and unveil it when the convoy was passing by. So this guy found the idea interesting and put some money.
Sometimes it is not so easy for us to develop a discourse that in a way tries to unveil and criticize the maladies of the capitalism and parallel to it being part of the engine, and hashing it for productivity and performance and mastery which we do, being also in a commercial studio. But i have to say that we can share expertises from both areas. Video shooting and editing is one for example. Developping the ability to work in group is another. For good and for bad, in our case the group is the same.
Another issue is the status of being an artist in Brazil different from being an artist in Europe for example. The welfare state and all the facilities enables the European artist to be much more comfortable, being an “outsider artist”. In Brazil and in South America in general, being outsider is completely different. You have to face the not so comfortable situation of really being outside the system... No medical assistance, no transport, no education, no nothing. So sooner or later you have to face middle-class bourgeois needs, like having to feed a family, having to buy a car or to pay a medical insurance and you won´t be able to be so independent anymore.
So each case is different and in the case of Bijari this format is quite working because we are together since 1997 despite all the internal crisis and dilemmas, something that is not so common in Brazil for artist collectives that tend to be more ephemeral.
Group members: Eduardo Fernandes, Geandre Tomazone, Gustavo Godoy, Mauricio Brandão, Olavo Ekman and Rodrigo Araújo
20.05.2011
