Mnica Nador

by Claire Rigby

Despite what you read in the newspapers, art isnt

all about the money. At least not for one pioneering
artist who abandoned the market and took to
the streets, bringing the residents of a down-at-heel
So Paulo district with her for the ride
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Mnica Nador lives at the end of the line. And then some. Reaching the community in terms of art and culture, and settled on the model
jamac, the community arts space that she founded in 2004 and that of continuing education that jamac embodies to this day, as a nondoubles as her home, involves a metro ride to Jabaquara, the last stop profit entity running arts-based workshop classes for adults. Funding
on the northsouth, Linha 1Azul line, followed by a 6km taxi ride for jamac comes from various, mainly governmental sources
to the bairro of Jardim Miriam, deep in south So Paulos vast urban mostly Brazils Ministry of Culture, thanks to jamacs status, as of
sprawl. Along the way, the citys concrete jungle skyline dwindles into 2010, as a Ponto de Cultura: a designated cultural hub. The centre
an arid, low-lying concrete scrubland, and as we draw closer to jamac, also makes some income from its wall-painting projects, and Nador
the taxi driver frets about motorbike bandits and general thievery adds personal funds to the extent that she is able, which is not
in Jardim Miriam, a neighbourhood in which more robberies were that much.
reported in December 2014 than in any other part of So Paulo.
Born in 1955, Nador graduated from So Paulos elite faap univerNear a busy high-street dotted with shops and spit-and-sawdust sity in 1983 and quickly found success as a painter, holding her first
bars, the Jardim Miriam Arte Clube (jamac), an independent commu- solo show that same year and taking part in multiple group shows
nity art-hub and arts-based adult-education centre, lies behind a wall and exhibitions. She was well connected from the start her father
adorned with panel after panel of vividly colourful, hand-stencilled was an art lover, a painter himself and a leading light in local cultural
patterns. Inside, through a green door and past a long, sunny patio politics; and her contemporaries and friends at faap included some
lined with workbenches, the artist is drinking coffee at a table in her of the most important figures in Brazilian art today, among them
spartan living space: a covered patio with a tiny bedroom leading off Leda Catunda, Jac Leirner, Srgio Romagnolo, Dora Longo Bahia, Ana
it, and a small kitchen and lavatory that are also used by the students Maria Tavares and Leonilson, and the gallerist Luciana Brito, who curwho come to jamac for courses in stencil, screenprinting and film- rently represents Nador.
making. The Saturday-morning cinema workshop is starting up as
The landmark 1984 exhibition Como Vai Voc, Gerao 80? (How are
we speak, and some of the students drift in to greet Nador with a kiss. you doing, 80s generation?), held at the School of Visual Arts at Parque
She first came to the neighbourhood in 2002 to carry out a set of Lage, Rio de Janeiro, featured works by Nador, Tavares, Catunda,
wall paintings, one of a series of such proLeonilson and Romagnolo, among many
jects she has been taking into Brazilian
others, including Beatriz Milhazes, whose
I wanted to stay close to Brazil
communities for almost 20 years, helping
exuberant canvases are now among the
and Brazilians, but I felt very distanced most highly valued of any living Brazilian
residents to develop their own motifs and
from that inside the mainstream art artist. While Milhazess work, recalls
patterns, create their own stencils and deNador, already showed a highly decoracorate their homes, schools, parks, hospicircuit no one seemed to want
tive bent, featuring cherubs and curlitals and streets with swathes of colourful
to set foot in the places, here in Brazil, cues, Nador showed a series of dark, dense
patterning. What the artist is offering,
where people actually live
curator Ivo Mesquita has said of Nador
large-scale graphite drawings, Campos
is the possibility to realise the contem(Fields). In her Campo 6 (1983), a multitude
porary practice of painting as a borderless, hierarchy-free territory. of short, insistent lines surge across the paper in tight-packed, systemReferring to one of the first of such projects, in 1998 in Nilo Peanha, atic columns; a dark mass that seems lit from behind by a soft, insistent
northeastern Brazil, in which the artist asked residents to paint a wall glow made by minuscule gaps between the strokes.
with images representative of local culture masks and drums were
These stormy works subsided as Nador moved into a mid-to-laterecurring motifs Nador wrote, I thought the public should play a 1980s period of painting warm, richly colourful works like those in
larger role. After all, those people would definitely not need one more the series Um Bom e Velho Monocromtico (A Good Old Monochrome, 1989),
foreigner showing off their wisdom and talent as opposed to their in which fields of colour, often built from rough, jerkily gestural
strokes, are bordered by neatly patterned, painted frames. In the
own local misery and ignorance.
Explaining the decision not only to put down roots in the form of series Para Orar (To Pray), and A Arte (The Art), also from the late 80s,
jamac, but also to move to Jardim Miriam herself, Nador tells me that Nador demonstrates a growing interest in Islamic imagery, incorposhe became tired of doing projects, forging connections, and then just rating shapes and motifs reminiscent of the style, and creating sumpleaving againI wanted to stay close to Brazil and Brazilians, but I tuously toned forms, mandalalike, that twist and swirl like dervishes.
felt very distanced from that inside the mainstream art circuit. In So Nadors initial interest in the style was sparked when she was treated
Paulo, much of the talk in the artworld was of exhibitions and events in for a medical condition in a house decorated with Turkish forms and
farflung places like London, Madrid, Tokyo and Dhaka, she says. But motifs. Contemplating an ornate ceiling with beautiful plaster mouldno one seemed to want to set foot in the places, here in Brazil, where ings that had been painted beige, spoiling the work, Nador began to
explore chromatic solutions for the ceiling, and soon found traces
people actually live.
Prior to the founding of jamac, in a display of the kind of radical of Islamic-style art infiltrating her own work. I became interested in
social empathy that appears, says Nador, to have gone out of fashion what for me became the loveliest expression of human culture a kind
these days, she and a small group of kindred spirits architects, of true excellence in artistic expression.
Her discovery of the styles ornate, harmonious forms also coincided
artists, urbanists initiated a long period of discussion with Jardim
Miriam residents and activists, among them feminists, militant metal- with a sea change in her spirits. As we leaf through the pages of a book
workers and members of Brazils landless movement,
about her work, Nador halts at the dense black mass
facing page Para Meca, 1989,
Movimento Sem Terra. The meetings moved, step by
of Campo 6. Thats the way I was, she says. She flips
acrylic on canvas, 200 150 cm.
step, towards a vision of what might most benefit Courtesy Luciana Brito Galeria, So Paulo forward to A Arte (1988), an ornate, surging mandala

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both images jamac, So Paulo, 2015.

Courtesy Claire Rigby

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ArtReview

in shades of pink and blue: This is what I became. The change, she
What about her own work does she still make paintings of her
says, was due to her discovery of Rolfing, analternative medical treat- own, beyond the works made collectively during jamacs projects
ment focusing on hands-on bodywork and movement training, which and workshops? Nador crosses to a long, low cabinet and comes back
marked a turning point in her life as well as in her art. There was a with two beautiful lithographs made during a 2014 residency at the
before, she says, and there was an after. The before included many Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico. A stylised house
years of bulimia and depression, the latter still present but kept at bay motif discernible in one was, she says, made at Tamarind the previous
at different times by remedies including complementary medicine, year by a resident from Botswana. Does it matter that the motif was
Prozac and assiduous use of marijuana. It helps me find my axis, and created by someone else? Is some level of shared authorship an inesstops me acting neurotically, she says. It helps me to be here.
capable part of her work now? She finds the question odd. I liked the
Being in Jardim Miriam has never been simple for Nador, and it image, she says. Ive always used other elements Islamic patterns,
isnt simple now, ten years on. From inside her bedroom, where two and so on. Theyre ready. Theyre beautiful. I dont feel the need to
cats are snoozing the day away, a small window looks through into make a new one. Thats the way it appears to me, its the choice I make.
the main workshop, and we stand and peer through for a moment, We live with whats possible. She laughs, then looks serious again.
watching the film class in full swing, unseen. These days, I sometimes If I was doing any other job, she says, Id be mad.
feel like Ive become superfluous, she says. Im not even sure whether
She would paint more, she says, But my work doesnt sell. I cant
I still need to be here.
understand why. A gallerist once told me, Everyone knows that its
Nador has repeatedly set herself rigorous challenges. In 1995 she the artist who really does the selling. So as well as making the work, I
began a masters degree at eca-usp, the University of So Paulo School have to sell it as well, and still give half to them? I cant seem to relate to
of Communications and Art, under the tutelage of the artist Regina gallerists. Nevertheless, barely a year goes by without Nadors work
Silveira, who introduced her to the 1981 essay The End of Painting being shown in a major exhibition of some description. Over the years,
by the us art-historian Douglas Crimp. In it, Crimp asks, To what she has shown her work at most of So Paulos major institutions
end painting in the 1980s?, casting the medium and those who cham- and galleries, including at Galeria Vermelho, Galeria Luisa Strina,
Casa Tringulo and her home gallery,
pion and profit from it as reactionary in
Luciana Brito; at the mac, the mam, the
contrast to art practices of the 1960s and
Nador didnt paint another canvas
Instituto Tomie Ohtake, the Pinacoteca
70s, which, Crimp wrote, abandoned
for the next ten years; and yet in 1996,
painting and coherently placed in quesand masp the citys major institutional
tion the ideological supports of painting, following a commission to create a wall players; and at the biennales of Sydney
and the ideology which painting, in turn,
(2004), Havana (2000), So Paulo (1983,
painting at So Paulos Museum
1991, 2006) and Gwangju (2012). She will
supports. Profoundly affected by the
of Modern Art, she alighted on the idea travel to Puerto Rico to take part in the
text, Nador herself abandoned painting.
of working as part of a group
iv Poly/Graphic San Juan Triennial, and
It paralysed me, she says. Her artistic
a shared-authorship exhibition of her
practice was, she realised, being channelled into a system that worked to create artificial constructs around work and jamacs was held in January at Pao das Artes, a gallery inside
it, aimed at proving I was a real artist. I felt like my creativity was the University of So Paulo. She is also currently working on a project
being diverted, only to be buried. I didnt want to connive with my in central So Paulo, leading a team to unearth decorative elements
from a stunning, semiderelict 1920s mansion, part of the Vila Itoror
class in that process.
Nador didnt paint another canvas for the next ten years; and yet in complex, which is in the process of becoming a new cultural hub.
1996, following a commission to create a wall painting at So Paulos
We linger over a set of lithographs she and others made the previous
Museum of Modern Art, she alit on the idea of creating large-scale day, in which an abstract pattern is printed first in dusty brown, then
works as part of a group. For Nador, the remedy for the death of the the paper turned 90 degrees and the pattern overlaid again in a rich
author/painter, and for the futility of the market-driven art machine, cerise. The juxtaposition of the shapes and colours in one particular
became shared authorship and the creation of socially useful art. She print is spectacular, resonating with the perfection of a two-part
spent the next few years carrying out wall-painting projects in commu- harmony. Nador stares at it, transfixed. Its magic when this happens.
nities in So Paulo.
This is why we do it, this is the reason for the patterns in Islamic art
In the main workshop space at jamac, where the film workshop is its how the universal order works. Its searching for God, its a matter
still underway, Nador reaches into a rack to pull out bolt after bolt of of mathematics, its a way to align your head, she says. Its clear, also,
hand-printed fabric, made in jamacs workshops. She whispers the that art has been Nadors way of trying to align far more than her own
stories behind the motifs covering the rolls of cloth, some of them head. Having first used it to explore darkness and then a lighter, more
printed on various swatches, in multiple formations and colour optimistic brightness, she has carried it along with her all the way, from
combinations. A turtle motif swarms a length of chocolate-brown and what felt like the art markets betrayal of her creativity into a transformmidnight-blue fabric, and is strewn across a cream swatch in dreamy ative, deeply committed present day, pressing it into action in order to
greys and pinks. It was created by an older woman, says Nador. She enact social change. Everyone has convictions; few possess the courage
wanted to draw a turtle, she says, but shes illiterate, and had never to live them. Deep in Jardim Miriam, a speck on the map in South
been taught how to hold a pencil. It took her ages, but she managed it. Americas largest metropolis, Nador is quietly doing just that. ar
Other fabrics are decorated with stylised trees, fruits, drums and
abstract patterns. They are beautiful, bold, exquisitely coloured and
Mnica Nadors work is included in the iv Poly/Graphic San Juan,
Triennial, 24 October 27 February
skilfully printed.

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Tamar Guimares