The work “Tropical Hermitage” is a masonry building, covered by vegetation (Heras - Ficus pumila and Parthenocissus tricuspidata), a lawn (Zoysia Japonica) in circumference and angel’s trumpets (Brugmansia suaveolens), a plant with hallucinogenic effects. The vegetations grow together with the others planted in the botanical garden, transforming, and integrating themselves into the landscape, to become almost invisible, a ‘non-place’. The concept is based on the research of the Hermits’ movements, whose isolation leads them to civil disobedience, since they no longer “exist” for the State, dodging their duties and rights as citizens. Such movements can be seen as the first performative movements.
The title of the work was “taken” from the book “Cartas da prisão e do sítio”, a collection of letters written by Friar Fernando de Brito during his imprisonment and when he lived in Sítio do Conde, a small community in the rural area of Bahia, where he called his house the Tropical Hermitage.
The site-specific was created during the artist’s residency at the Usina de Arte, a former sugarcane mill, transformed into an artistic-botanical park.
The sugarcane universe, with its past of slavery and labor struggles, a recurring theme in the artist’s works, appears now, subverting the hierarchical orders of labor, inviting his former employees to the workplace, this time for idleness and leisure.
A place reserved for reflection, with its labyrinthine architecture, but with several entrances and several exits, making it possible to choose the path to follow and its strategies for life changes.
The work also integrates the solar movement, where the sun breaks through the Hermitage’s gate, on September 22, the Spring Equinox, beginning a new period of transformation and nature’s vital cycle.
The visitor is invited to experience a state of individual or collective performance.
Márcio Almeida
Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil, 1963
He currently lives and works in Recife, Brazil
www.marcioalmeida.org
Multimedia, he began his career in the 1980s and, since then, has developed his work using various forms: paintings, drawings, engravings, objects, photographs, videos, installations, including some destined for urban interventions. His gaze and interest focus on human behavior issues related to the notion of displacement, transience, and belonging. He also focuses on issues of geopolitics and the occupation of urban space.
