artnexus #116

What sets apart the work of Carla Chaim (São Paulo, 1983) is the use of a diverse array of resources: sculpture, video, installation, and performance, as well as the significant presence of drawing with an emphasis on the exploration and breach of its customary boundaries.White, black, and gray are three key colors in the execution of her works, backed by demanding intellectual preparations. Be it in her graphic-art projects or performances, the precise use of resources that characterize Chaim’s meticulous work averts artifice. Each line, each motion of her body, and each trace of her presence are deployed in the exploration of a variety of subjects in which feelings and reason come to converge.
A relationship with space is essential. Chaim studies the architecture of the assigned location and decides how to process it to create a dialog between space and body. Her works are interested in everyday experiences that envelop viewers and turn them into participants rather than mere observers. Space, motion, and body are three elements in Chaim’s experimentation. As the artist notes in a 2020 interview available in Vimeo (https://carlachaim.com/Carla-Chaim-Bravo-entrevista), she is interested in a process that considers the body, materializes it in space, and follows its movements. In the work featured on our cover, Projeto para curvar o corpo (Project for Bending the Body), every day is seen as a possible instrument of power. The female figure walking along a beach, absorbed in thought, is captured by the camera from a high angle; surveillance is suggested, but to what end? Is it because of the beauty of the image, or is the possibility of a different type of gaze, control, being alluded to here? A situation of ambivalence is inescapably generated in the effort to interpret this image.
IVONNE PINI