Suíte manequins 2 (Mannequin Suite 2)

"Impotence before the human condition, this vast torment which aggressed the artist, took on distinct possibilities of materialization in Iberê's engravings.
In his early attempts at engraving after his return to the South, Iberê gave priority to making screen prints as of 1985. This was the moment in which the artist began to jot down aspects of everyday life, as he strolls through the Redenção Park, in the rapid movements of the passersby. He also compulsively sketched mannequins, those lifeless beings which simulate life, encloistered in the seductive storefront window displays of the shops on rua da Praia. But Iberê's contacts with the banal aspects of life assumed an importance in his work, and incorporated the strong content of his existential discussions.
[...] The artist also produced a well-known series in the same technique - the Suite manequins (Mannequin Suite), ten engravings made in 1986, jointly commissioned by Tina Zappoli and Pedro Paulo Mendes da Silva.
[...]
The works in the Suite manequins (Mannequin Suite) consist of spontaneously sketched mannequins which somehow appear to be demanding explanation for their own existence. They are quite a contrast to the thick, dark texture of the prints of the 1960s. All of them, however, were generated from within Iberê's customary anxiety, manifested different paths which his work presented. The former works materialize amid the density of the material of the engraving, their dark backgrounds a tumultuous abyss; the latter ones, in contrast, allude to the artist's revolt against the solitary and banal field of everyday life, life's emptiness and futility, to the superficiality of man in a society of unlimited consumerism. The characters also speak of the death of man, of the 'imitation of life' and the lies that permeate human relationships. Even within an apparently superficial and illustrative conformation, these prints are charged with strong critical content. They are impregnated also with a profound anxiety, for these mannequins reflect the artist's rejection of these facts which are a part of the fabric of social life."
Mônica Zielinsky, Iberê Camargo: catálogo raisonné (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2006), 103-104.