Mabe Bethônico

The contact through dissonance that guided the search and re-readings undertaken by Mabe Bethônico based on the work of geologist and engineer Edgar Aubert De La Rüe (1901-1991), from his expedition through Brazil’s caatinga, is the theme of BR 122: notícias de viagens à caatinga [BR 122: news of trips to the caatinga], which opens at the Galeria Marília Razuk on September 3rd.
On a Unesco mission, Aubert De La Rüe undertook his expedition through Brazil’s
caatinga in the 1950s, on a search for minerals. He found much more than he was looking for a cultural and popular civersity – marked by handicrafts, street fairs, plants and landscapes – that changed not just his trip, but his perception of Brazil. Wandering through a region rife with inequality, miserable and afflicted by drought, the experience gave the geologist a vision of a country divided a New Brazil that was undergoing urban expansion, development and internationalization, set against an old Brazil full of manners, values and archaic conditions of existence. The experience gave birth to the book Brésil Aride – La vie dans La caatinga/ Árido Brasil – A vida na caatinga [Arid Brazil – Life in the caatinga], currently out of print, but which is revisited by the artist in De como Mabe Bethônico percorreu a caatinga na Suíça [How Mabe Bethônico travelled through the caatinga in Switzerland], pubished by Edições Capacete-RJ, in 2013.
The artist undertook his research in three ways: translating the book by Aubert de La Rüe, researching files on the geologist, and through a new expedition that treads the same paths, seing the transformations undergone by the caatinga in recent years – and the permanence of the same old problems.
This gives rise to the artist’s exhibition, curated by Ana Paula Cohen, which will create, within the confines of the Galeria Marilia Razuk, a modular construction of content islands to tackle the complexity of issues that the author wrestled with, seeking to update them with content from new sources created and raised by the artist. The work presents this travelling “character” who turned his eye specifically on some issues: street fairs and tourism, the islands, winds and volcanoes, for example. The exhibition is a journey that navigates through an individual’s interests, leading to the construction of other worlds of the imagination.