Jonathas de Andrade: With the heart coming out of the mouth, Brazil Pavilion

With The Fundação Bienal de São Paulo and the Special Secretariat for Culture, artist Jonathas de Andrade reveals a new installation, “With the heart coming out of the mouth” for the Pavillion of Brazil at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, the exhibition—consisting of photographs, sculptures, and videos—examines Brazilian identity, referring back to the human body and experience. The artist was inspired by the science fairs of his youth and his encounter with a 1980s installation, Eva, a replica of a woman which traveled through Brazil as an educational attraction for learning human anatomy. Curator Visconti said of the project, “In his works, the artist seeks the idea of an authentically popular culture – ‘popular’ in all the possible senses of this intrinsically complex term. The body, mainly the male body, is the common thread for dealing with themes such as the world of work and of the worker, as well as the identity of the contemporary subject, through metaphors that oscillate between nostalgia, eroticism, and political and historical criticism.”