Past Events
Cao
Guimarães
Gambiarras/Make
Do
7 October
- 3 November 2008
Images
Biography
Taking place in the context of the Pharos Trust’s Brazilian
Culture Month 2008 and organized in cooperation with the Embassy
of Brazil in Cyprus, the exhibition Gambiarras/Make Do
gives insight into the work of Brazilian filmmaker and visual
artist Cao Guimarães.
The work of Cao Guimarães reflects, in an exemplary manner, the
intense encounter and dialectic between documentary and
contemporary art, domains which until recently were distant and
even mutually hostile. His feature-length films are thus
strongly marked by photography, experimental films and video
installations, which the artist has carried out since the early
90s. Also, Guimarães engages with various aesthetic, ethic and
methodological characteristics of documentary filmmaking in
order to depict solitary characters most often at the margins of
capitalist modernity, even if pierced by it. Cao Guimarães
finds, in his own particular way, a certain contemporary cinema
composed of long tracking shots; in the manner of filmmakers
such as Gus Van Sant, Abbas Kiarostami, Alexandre Soukourov and
Mercedes Alvarez.
“Cao Guimarães’ working process, employed since his first
documentary, favours an unseen and concentrated attention to the
small things of the world, beings, movements, gestures, sounds,
noises, conversations.” (Ricardo Sardenberg, Time and Device
in Cao Guimarães Films, 2007)
Cao Guimarães was born in 1965 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where
he currently lives and works.
Since the end of the 1980’s his work has been shown at various
internationally renowned museums and galleries including the
Tate Modern and the Guggenheim Museum.
His films have been shown and have received awards in several
film festivals including the Locarno International Film Festival
(2004 and 2006), Cannes Film Festival (2005) and the Sundance
Film Festival (2007).
Cao Guimarães work is included in
public collections such as the
Foundation Cartier Pour L’Art Contemporain, Tate Modern, Walker
Art Center, Guggenheim Museum, Museu de Arte Moderna de São
Paulo.
