Drinking tea together The “World Citizens” project is intrinsically linked to the “City as a Process” exhibition, in some way being a logical follow-up to the latter as it shifts the focus from a city per se to two of its inhabitants. Paulo Nazareth (born in 1977), a young Brazilian artist, and Evgeniy Malakhin (1938-2005), a key figure of the Ural underground scene, belong to completely different cultures whose paths have rarely if ever crossed. So the question of what these artists can possibly have in common is quite legitimate. The answer is not at all self-evident and requires a deep immersion into the work of the two protagonists. Evgeniy Malakhin (better known as B.U. Kashkin or Old Man Bukashkin), who has passed away in 2005, was one of the most extraordinary residents of Ekaterinburg, the caliber of his personality rising to the level of “citizen of the world”. Changing both in appearance and in substance, his art practices were filling the void not only in the mental and physical space of the city of Sverdlovsk, then renamed Ekaterinburg, but also in the lives of individual people. As for Paulo Nazareth, working with space – both in the narrow and in the broad senses of the word – is very important for him. Covering great distances on foot and gathering on the soles of his shoes the dust of many a territory, he unites these territories into one great Earth. National borders are, for Nazareth, but political conventions. Nazareth’s greatest journey was along the American continent, where in each country he performed a special ritual whereby he identified himself with the location – most often this ritual consisted of taking pictures of himself with local residents and / or with cards inscribed with text in the local language. Recording oneself in foreign places is a sui generis test of compatibility between oneself and the world. The only reason that the many pictures of Paulo cannot formally be called self-portraits is that the shutter button was pressed not by the artist himself, but by random (or not so random) passers-by. The composition of all these pictures is very static and they are all very much alike. This artistic plainness may be due to the unprofessionalism of the photographers or, perhaps, to Paolo’s own request. Seeing himself on pictures taken by others is, for Nazareth, part of an effort to evaluate his capacity to blend into foreign environments. But, at the same time, it is also means involving “others” in the creative process – something that was important for Malakhin-Bukashkin, too. The many portraits of Bukashkin on his painted “moral-chopping boards”, in his art-books, and on his easel-paintings are not self-portraits in the strict sense of the word either. All of them were done by somebody else under the guidance of the artist himself, who had come up with his own “iconography”: a black-bearded old man in a red cloak, with a funny hat and braids. This extravagant, startling, and weird image became Bukashkin’s trademark, part of his identity. In his portraits, Nazareth also addresses the issue of his identity, as their caption “My Image of Exotic Man for Sale” so conspicuously attests. Text is an integral part of Paolo Nazareth’s works, helping establish a line of communication between the viewer, the author, and the work. And it is that same text that divides them, whenever there is a language barrier. The extent to which it can be overcome is also something that Nazareth studies. The role of text is essential for understanding the works of Evgeniy Malakhin. Text as a message, as a game, as an experiment, as a bond, as an invocation – all of this can be found in his art. Both artists are interested in various aspects of the linguistic space and its boundaries. There is yet another spatial level studied by both artists: the natural environment. Burying his head in the water, in the sand, in the stones, in the bushes, Nazareth creates the image of an insurmountable opposition between man and nature: the simultaneous desire for and impossibility of returning to the natural environment and losing oneself in it. In Malakhin’s artistic system, nature is present more via representatives of the fauna – the eternal subjects of his humorous poetic experiments and their illustrations whose creation he oversaw (but which he did not draw himself). Despite being separated in time and space, Evgeniy Malakhin and Paolo Nazareth would undoubtedly have found a common language. And had Paolo been able to bridge the immense distance between Brazil and Russia 12 years ago, he and Bukashkin would surely have met and would have spent much time drinking tea in his studio, immersed in conversation.

Daria Kostina

Here is art

2012. We can remember of the two decades of the opening to the entry of foreigners in Ekaterinburg. Important industrial center in Russia’s History, the area was considered for some decades as of important secrets and the circulation of non-Russians was forbidden. Ironically, in the second edition of the biennial that has “industrial” in its name, we have the opportunity to prepare an exhibition that puts two poetics side by side.

Born in 1977, it’s possible to affirm that walking is the main instrument of artistic research for Paulo Nazareth. In 2011, the artist made a track between Brazil and New York, going through the whole called “Latin America”. During six months, Nazareth had photography and video as partners and made some records of his encounters with other human beings. When arrived in the United States of America, he washed, by the first time at the Hudson River. Which factors distance one country that is called “unietd” to the many other Americas? We could many reasons as geography, economy and politics. What Paulo Nazareth seems to bold is, on the other side, what approximates us or should approximate – the human factor.

While Nazareth was born, Bukashkin was in process of high artistic production. If around forty years separates their born years, the same can’t be said about the images that they produced. Self-portraits are present in both works – in the first, mostly through photography and in painting in the second. The writing is another important element. Bukashkin was a poet that organized artist’s books where the relation between image and text was very important. In this same contrast that the alterity is clear in the artist oeuvre – through different efforts in transforming his poems in image, he and people with artistic education collaborated in his production.

Any of us can be an artist. This capacity that seems to be latent in the works by Bukashkin and Nazareth. It’s about amplifying the concept of art besides the fine arts. Objects collected in the street can be seen through an aesthetic eye. As Paulo Nazareth says in his pamphlets, “here is art”- I am art, you are art, we are art, they are art. Let’s hope that this encounter, even if virtual, of the two forces, can become art too. That new crossings between Brasil and Russia, these two distant country-continents but at the same time so close, can be able to proportionate more collaborations that celebrate the delicate art of living together.

[and that everyday more Brazilians walk in Russia and Russians walk through Brazil]

Raphael Fonseca

Paulo Nazareth – “Intento de vuelo” (vídeo, 2012) www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0ffagsCkpo

Paulo Nazareth – “Cuando tengo comida em mis manos” (vídeo, 2012) www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2MA2iJ7wGU

Paulo Nazareth – “Broken flags 003” (vídeo, 2012)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7edBbHSdcXw