Nelson Leirner

In early 2009, near the end of President Lula's second term in office, the federal government of Brazil announced a low-income housing program with the title of "My Home, My Life." The idea was to build about one million houses in different regions of the country, for low-income families to purchase in very affordable installments. Of the total number of houses, 400,000 were set aside for people earning between zero and tree minimum wages. Six years after the announcement, much have changed in the Brazilian political scene. Lula had left the stage, and his former office is now in the hands of Dilma Rouseff, already in her second term. After her rise to power, several graft scandals involving various levels of government broke out, and Rouseff's administration became widely seen as a red stain of corruption. I concur with historian Sidney Chalhoub's words, in a text circulated during the last election, in late 2014: "Insisting on the issue of correction as if the current government had invented the monster is an acid combination of ignorance and hypocrisy. Let's deal first with historical ignorance, something the media excels at. Corruption is, to put it one way, in the Brazilian state's DNA."1 Nelson Leirner's career spans more than five decades, since his first solo exhibition in 1961. His oeuvre is extensive and multifaceted, based on paintings and drawings as well as works with an element of public-space insertion, and more recently on installations and sculptures that evinced his intense drive to collect objects. Leirner's interventions traverses several moments in Brazilian history, from the censorship under military rule to the growth of the art market in the last decade. When I learned that Leirner was to be in charge of Projeto Respiração, organized by Rio de Janeiro's Eva Klabin Foundation, I imagined he would reflect on the institution's nature as a collector. Since the foundation is located in the former residence of the woman from whom it takes its name, a collector of artworks ranging from Greco-Roman objects to Impressionist paintings, I would not be surprised if Leirner filled one of the rooms with objects gathered at street markets. Instead of miniatures, the artist chose to reflect on a topic that is directly proportional to an exhibition held inside a house, and also to his interest in industrial objects: low-income housing. This helps us understand the title of the project: Nossa casa, minha vida ("Our Home, My Life"). Appropriating the name of the government project mentioned above, Leirner suppresses the first person singular and shifts to the plural, leaving with a question: who is the "us" in that "our"? The artist and the audience? The Brazilian people? The tension is established between a program focused on low-income housing and a house located in one of Rio de Janeiro's posh areas, housing an art collection made possible by its owner financial power. The English Room conceived by Eva Klabin, where works of Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Lawrence were placed and where she entertained her friends, was emptied and then filled with objects, wallpaper, and decorations matching a certain idea of a low-income home . Public and private elements come together in a single proposal that, inevitably, also alludes to the profound social contrasts that shape Rio de Janeiro's culture. At the entrance to the foundation was a plaque that read: "Visit the furnished apartment," indicating that Leirner's proposal was formed as a real-estate fiction, a life-size model of the decoration found in an accessible-financing apartment. His signature is noticeable in the excess of magnets on the fridge placed inside a room that, in reality, is many thing in one: kitchen, dining ...