The Drunkard and the Tightropewalker

Luiz Armando Bagolin

Published in the book
Carmela Gross: Quase Circo [Almost a Circus]. São Paulo: Cosac, 2025

[português]

In Vojtech Jasny’s film When the Cat Comes (Az Prijde Kocour, 1963), a traveling circus arrives in a small village, accompanied by a magical cat wearing glasses. The cat’s glasses hold a special power: when removed, the cat sees people in colors that reveal their true personalities. Liars appear purple, thieves are gray, hypocrites are yellow, and lovers glow red. During their first performance in the village, a young woman who embodies the spirit of youth removes the cat’s glasses. Instantly, everyone in the audience sees themselves bathed in these colors, exposing their hidden natures and throwing the crowd into a state of chaos. In the aftermath, the cat escapes, and a frantic chase ensues as both good and bad people race to catch the mysterious feline. In society, we often live deceptively, pretending to be something we are not in front of others. However, it is nearly impossible to fool a cat, magical or not. The film blends fable and political critique in a poetic-philosophical way, evoking a Rousseau-like sensibility. It was created in a decade just beginning, one destined to be marked by pivotal global events: the rise of the civil rights movement in Washington led by Martin Luther King, the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, and the start of João Goulart’s presidency in Brazil (his first and only year in office before the 1964 military coup).

In many ways, the magnificent exhibition by Carmela Gross, recently opened at Sesc Pompeia in São Paulo, shares both thematic and political ties with the film. The artist began her work in that same pivotal decade, manipulating the symbols of capitalism and consumption while engaging with questions surrounding artistic languages (particularly drawing). Through these explorations, she has sought to reflect on the conditions of freedom, always shaped by markets and political regimes, as well as on the diverse possibilities of human expression within a field broader than the arts. Her work often reveals a desirable contamination between the initial gestures and observations of a child and the more refined forms of high art. At the same time, it incorporates the techniques of making homemade objects, like those contraptions from our childhood that served as substitutes for industrialized goods.

This second quality connects Carmela’s work directly to Lina Bo Bardi’s (1914–1992) architecture, who designed Sesc Pompeia (opened in 1982) fusing modernist construction principles with the forms and memories of an old drum factory. Lina skillfully preserved part of the factory-like atmosphere of the space, while also envisioning the playful purpose of the objects once manufactured there, the festivities, and the spirit of popular joy. It is precisely this atmosphere that Carmela amplifies with the arrangement of thirteen large-scale installations in Almost a Circus. For example, in BIG WHEEL [RODA GIGANTE] (2019/2024), around 320 ordinary objects (such as buckets of sand and dirt, construction carts, toys, garden ornaments, machines, tires, fire extinguishers, and drums) become symbols of labor, discarded after their utility. Yet, they also suggest the possibility of being repurposed, gaining new functionality in a new twist of fate. In a world where economic inequality leaves the most vulnerable perpetually excluded from fully engaging in either the industrial or post-industrial systems, the wheel embodies the tension of transformation (as the cables to which the objects are tied are secured to the building’s ceiling structure), into a toy, an amusement, or a puzzle.

On the back wall, nestled among the cable networks, appears EXTRAS [FIGURANTES] (2016), a sign displaying the names of ordinary workers, typically anonymous individuals who form the foundation of the socioeconomic pyramid. In WOOD RIVER [RIO MADEIRA] (1990/2024), hundreds of small wooden slats, painted green and red, line the reflecting pool in the institution’s communal space. The word ripa (slat) is synonymous with riba, meaning riverbank or margin, but it also evokes marginalization in the social sense. Once again, with simple elements reminiscent of toys, Carmela suggests a connection between marginalized people and the dwellings that precariously line riverbanks and streams, often vulnerable to floods and diseases due to inadequate sewage and wastewater systems. At the same time, the wooden slats evoke musical instruments, like the keys of an organ, capable of resonating throughout the space, mixing their colors with the shimmering reflections in Lina’s designed reflecting pool.

RED LADDERS [ESCADAS VERMELHAS] (2012/2024) invites us to reflect on the passage between sky and earth, between high and low, echoing the architecture’s approach of blurring the boundaries between high culture and popular culture. As Paulo Miyada, the exhibition’s curator, explains:

In GANG [BANDO] (2016/2024), a series of zinc sheets features green silkscreened images of shadows or silhouettes of animals (are they real or imagined?) lined up on construction-grade plywood, the kind typically used as fencing to conceal what’s happening behind it. The installation alludes to the destruction of our ecosystem in the name of progress and economic development, which, as always, benefits only a small fraction of the population.

In CAT [GATO] (2024), Carmela revisits Lina’s (unrealized) vision of painting each of the concrete walkways of the factory building in primary colors: blue, yellow, red, and green. The artist installs neon signs in these colors with Italian words, paying homage to Lina and the Italian laborers who contributed to São Paulo’s industrial growth in the early 20th century. At the same time, the work plays on the Brazilian slang term gato, which implies improvisation, cleverness, or sometimes subversive actions that defy the rules. Carmela’s Gato hints at the colors Lina had planned for the concrete walkways but never realized, allowing us to imagine them as if they were painted. Carmela invites us to look through a kind of lens (like the magical glasses of the cat in the film) opening up the possibility of envisioning the architectural space as its creator originally imagined it, free from later interventions or compromises (which inevitably exist).

In all the works on display, often created with humble materials like zinc sheets, construction wood, and silkscreens, there is a palpable sense of urgency to recognize ourselves in a world undergoing transformation, one detached from metaphysical disputes or any form of idealism (it’s worth noting that as a post-conceptual artist, Carmela rejects all forms of idealism). Her work encourages us to engage with the things around us while we still have the ability to do so. And if we can experience them with joy and authenticity, all the better.

As you walk through Carmela’s exhibition in the expansive and welcoming spaces of Sesc Pompeia, with its vibrant colors, lights, and sense of joy, yet also laden with political connotation and engagement, it’s almost impossible not to think of the song The Drunkard and the Tightrope Walker [O Bêbado e a Equilibrista], composed by Aldir Blanc and João Bosco and immortalized by the voice of Elis Regina (1945–1982). The song, dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, also became a tribute to all those who resisted and disappeared during the dictatorship, a period that left Brazil a sadder place ever since.

[…] The drunkard with a bowler hat
Made a thousand irreverences
To the night of Brazil
My Brazil that dreams
Of the return of Henfil’s brother
With so many people who left
On a rocket’s tail
Cry our gentle motherland
Marias and Clarisses cry
On the soil of Brazil
But I know that such a piercing pain
Will not be in vain
Hope dances
On the tightrope with an umbrella
And with each step of this line
It can get hurt […]