Exhibitions

Event organised as part of the Brazilian Season in France 2025

The aim of the exhibition is to bring Ivens Machado’s work to France. He belongs to a generation of artists who emerged in the 1970s, succeeding the Neoconcrete movement at the time of the rise of the dictatorial regime.

The first part of the exhibition will feature a selection of video and photographic works documenting the performances of this period. It will show how social tensions were expressed through the body and the performative gesture. Issues of violence, repression and sexuality are addressed, often very explicitly. These are all themes he has explored throughout his life through a variety of materials.

In the second part, these proposals from the 1970s will be articulated with his sculptures, which incorporate cement, bricks, iron and wood, all materials used in construction. All his forms suggest the presence of bodies. They establish relationships between physicality and construction, architecture and ruins, sometimes in a provocative manner. As in his performances, the body and sensuality are also essential dimensions in the elaboration of his sculptural forms.

Interestingly, his practice is based on the subversion of conventional sculpture, making him one of the undisputed leaders of his generation of sculptors in Brazil, who has influenced many younger artists.

This exhibition fits in perfectly with Carré d’Art’s programming, which has recently featured Nairy Baghramian and Tarik Kiswanson, two artists who challenge the practice of sculpture in a political field, in a relationship to the body and to performance. It’s a way of reinterpreting Ivens Machado’s work in a Brazilian context, as well as a more international one.

The exhibition will be presented in the Project Room, on the same dates as the Lucas Arruda exhibition, also part of the Brazil in France season.