NOILA SOUZA at Toró: é tudo tanto
Toró: é tudo tanto
It's all so much
TUES 21 MARCH - TUES 13 JUNE 2023
TE TAUNGA COMMUNITY HUB, GRAND FOYER
FREE WITH MUSEUM ENTRY
Entirely curated by a diverse collective of artists of Brazilian heritage in Aotearoa New Zealand, Toró: é tudo tanto features stunning, vibrant artworks and interactive elements. Toró, translated in English, is a downpour. In a torrent of images, words, sounds, sensations, meanings and artistic expressions, you are invited to reflect on the experience of otherness and its contradictions.
ARTISTS' STATEMENT:
Toró: é tudo tanto is a collective exhibition that adopts the image of Toró to make sense out of the hybrid multiplicity that gushes out of our country, Brazil. The word Toró is Tupi (one of the largest indigenous groups of Brazil before its colonization) for jorro d’água, translated in English as a downpour. In the gallery's torrent of images, words, sounds, sensations, meanings and artistic expressions, you are invited to reflect on otherness and its contradictions. The multiplicity of "Brasis" (the plural of Brazil) - being Brazilian, being so much, (at times) being too much. From Brazil to Aotearoa. From continental dimensions to an island. The large, the tiny. The Atlantic, the Pacific. Tupi, Portuguese, English, te Reo Māori . The invisibility of multiple native peoples, the indigenous (lack of) acknowledgement.
In the gallery space you will be guided to a series of confluent and contradictory narratives that collapse the stereotypes of Brazil as looked at from afar or on a Google search. You can discover the provocations that arose from internal conversations amongst us, Brazilian immigrants, when asking ourselves ‘How to express what Brazil is? É tudo tanto! (It’s all so much!)’. We have gathered multiple responses from our artist community in Aotearoa and in Brazil to offer you a Toró that flows from traditional to contemporary takes on Brazilian culture(s).
Noila Souza with her work Tupinambá Carnavalesco - photo by Victor D’Alcantara
Tupinambá Carnavalesco: Inspired by the vibrant Carnival culture and indigenous cultures of Brazil, this artwork is a mix of both, in an explosion of symbols. Tubinambá means the first, original, Creoles and it is the name of a native territory of an indigenous tribe of wide coverage. Tupi-namba (land of the descendants of Tupi). Caboclinho Rei Tupinambá is a resistance folkloric dance performed during Carnival in Recife, Pernambuco. Using a mannequin as a platform that evokes a female body - one of the beautiful forms of expression in Brazilian Carnival - The object becomes a platform to adorn symbols from some states of Brazil, making reference to indigenous artforms and also reflecting the struggle of the tupinamba indigenous people in protecting their territory. On one side, the fight for the conservation of forests and at the other side, the expression of life celebrated through Carnival. Brazil’s cultural diversity presents climatic, economic, social, and cultural differences between its regions, and this indigenous mixture of the Brazilian people makes it a curious people. One can say that when moving to another country, we start to live with different patterns of behaviour, habits and experiences than the ones we are used to. Even within Brazil from state to state we have so much diversity that we need to have a process of cultural adaptation of “immigrants”. Tribes come together, societies gain, and Brazilians celebrate their diversity as a Toró of everything, so much.