Folheto da exposição "Provedor"

Tales Frey

(Catanduva-SP, Brasil, 1982)

Tales Frey is a transdisciplinary artist represented by Galeria Verve in São Paulo and Shame Gallery in Brussels. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Humanistic Studies of the University of Minho, where he is a professor and Assistant Researcher. He holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies from the University of Coimbra, a Master’s degree in Theory and Criticism of Art, and a specialization in Contemporary Art Practices from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Theater Direction from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

He has presented original creations in various contexts, including The Kitchen and Judson Memorial Church in New York, Musée des Abattoirs in Toulouse, Athens Museum Of Queer Arts (AMOQA) in Athens, MACRO – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Centro Municipal de Arte Helio Oiticica, Fundação Theatro Municipal de São Paulo – Praça das Artes, SESC SP, MIS SP – Museu da Imagem e do Som de São

Hilda de Paulo

(Inhumas-GO, Brasil, 1987)

Hilda de Paulo is an artist, researcher, writer, and independent curator, a third-world transvestite defender of transfeminism as methodologically decolonial, and author of the Arquivo Gis project. She is a programmer for Queer Lisboa and Queer Porto, a founding member of Cia. Excessos and eRevista Performatus.

Currently, she is a doctoral candidate in Literary, Cultural, and Interartistic Studies at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Porto in Portugal. She was an assistant curator of the exhibitions “Ana Mendieta:

Paulo, BienalSur in Buenos Aires, TSB Bank

Wallace Arts Centre in Auckland, Galeria Labirynt in Poland, Defibrillator Gallery in Chicago, Galleria Moitre in Turin, Kuala Lumpur 7th Triennial – Barricade in Malaysia, The Biennial 6th Bangkok Experimental Film Festival in Thailand, among others.

His works are held in public and private collections, including Akureyri Art Museum in Iceland, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Museu Bienal de Cerveira, MUNTREF in Buenos Aires, Pinacoteca João Nasser, Museu de Arte de Goiânia, Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Niterói, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo.

He received the Acquisition Award at the XIX International Biennial of Art of Cerveira 2017, Honorable Mention at the 17th National Salon of Contemporary Art of Guarulhos in 2021, Honorable Mention at the II International Biennial of Gaia Art in 2017, and Best Costume Designer at Aldeia FIT 2006.

Silhueta em Fogo” and “terra abrecaminhos” (2023) at Sesc Pompeia (São Paulo-SP, Brazil), as well as the coordinator, ideator of the parallel program, and editorial organizer of “terra abrecaminhos”. Alongside Tales Frey, she was the curator of Mostra Performatus I (2014) at Central Galeria de Arte (São Paulo-SP) and Mostra Performatus II (2017) at Sesc Santos (Santos-SP, Brazil), as well as the exhibition “ÁguaAr” (2015) by Suzana Queiroga at Centro para os Assuntos da Arte e Arquitectura (Guimarães, Portugal), among others.

Provador Exhibition Map

“The dominant knowledges are overthrown [...] as a body faints when allowing itself to be kissed until the bite of a vampiric lover.”

— Paul B. Preciado

Tales Frey tries on high-heeled shoes. As an artistic exercise and way of life, the artist subverts the codes – or the cultural scripts that dialogue with social imaginaries – of masculinity and femininity – and also of sexual practices – in his iconic and emblematic queer (re)constructions to question the action of dominant normalization disciplines that produce and impose specific forms of subjectivation in the embodied political fiction that we are – even when leaving us sometimes in a state of tension, discomfort, fury, and dispossession because we do not belong to the norm. With a multifaceted trajectory of almost two decades, Frey reaffirms, above all, a very particular way of articulating himself in the space of creation, in which his body succeeds and juxtaposes itself as primary material – political potency of life – in multiple media, from videos and photographs to kinetic sculptures, performances, drawings, garments, and installations.

In “Provador” (“Fitting Room”) the fabulatory gesture of the artist challenges what is considered normal, natural, and true within the cis-heteropatriarchal order of our daily lives, showing that the dispositif dimension of life is not only the result of discursive effects on sex-gender-desire but also emphasizes the transformative political potency of certain bodies and identities that are daily read as “abnormal” and constantly traversed by exhausting normative regulation. Therefore, it is important to locate that the subject-artist of enunciation is queer, because he uses the image and consciousness of his body

to produce queer representations solo or together with other bodies of multiple other identity markers, and it is no coincidence that we see in the many documentary records of his performances some audience members feeling almost always authorized to explicitly challenge the artist’s body(-ies) in an attempt to correct it(-them), as is the case of the spectator almost burning the artist’s buttocks with a lighter in “Please, Do Not Touch” (2015) in Portugal, as well as of men prophesying and threatening to punch the duo of performers during the presentation of “Be (On) You” (2016) in Mexico, and of the passerby wanting to shoot the five performers in “The Body Never Exists in Itself – Variant I” (2018) in Brazil, among other examples.

In the exhibition room of Maus Hábitos, the high heel is reappropriated by the artist as an epistemological twist in the video performance “Il Faut Souffrir pour Être Belle” (2018), in the documentation of the performance “Footwear” (2024), in the drawing “Step III” (2024), and in the sculpture “Stiletto Dance” (2024). In summary, these queer metaphors evoked by Frey – together with the wall intervention “Overflow” (2024) –respond to the various questions that emerge from our time, serving as a fundamental instrument for conceptualizing other forms of organization of bodies and their social practices, as well as a theoretical tool for understanding the social construction and historical and cultural manufacture of differences in the face of such supposed ontological truth.

Works:

1) Il Faut Souffrir pour Être Belle, 2018. Videoperformance, 2’03”

2) Stiletto Dance, 2024. Sculpture

3) Overflow, 2024. Intervention on wall

4) Step III, 2024. Drawing

5) Footwear, 2024. Collage