Glass room | Emmanuel Nassar: Space Bodywork

(...) the scientific and political aspect, also contains an informal term, which refers to the metallic structures of motor vehicles. For the artist, bodywork is associated with the term “old wreck,” generally used to designate the precarious state of large, deteriorated machines. 

In this juxtaposition, there is something of the dream and fantasy of flying. But if flight is connected to the image of freedom that both planes and birds evoke, one of the wings of Space Bodywork is severed, as if it were ingrained in the wall. Inside the MAM São Paulo’s Glass Room, the work seems to address the impossibility of taking flight rather than the complete fulfillment of the longing for freedom. 

But instead of praising the high performance and power of a small aircraft, the artist ironically points to the country's social contradictions and the contrast between the elite’s and the people’s imageries, showing precisely that this separation is not so clear.

Although in the present work he does not make use of discarded plates and uses galvanized zinc plates instead, the set of paintings that form the plane echoes the improvisation of inventive solutions. 

Space Bodywork allows MAM's diverse audiences to amuse themselves while being welcomed with the prestige and status of a red carpet;, to play, to take selfies with the luggage, as if they were about to embark on a dream that, although will not literally take off, realizes itself in the unique and generous experience the work provides.

Cauê Alves
Chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo