Memory, poetics, and politics. The use and disuse of objects

Abstract

This article systematizes the poetic journey of Selma Parreira – a Brazilian artist from the state of Goiás – based on her exhibition Desuso (Disuse), (2016), a development of her project Machina: Memória e Poética do Espaço e Objetos (Machina: Memory and Poetics of Space and Objects) (2015). By means of pictorial signs, Selma uses her childhood memories and contemplates the machinic space – a rice field shed in the city of Anápolis, Goiás (part of her family’s estate) – to deepen investigation into visual poetics. These signs intertwine memory, history, time/space/place, aesthetics, cultural performance in Goiás, and politics. To do so, I adopt an interdisciplinary approach supported by the works of Jacque Rancière, Walter Benjamin, Michel de Certeau, Michael Serres, Charles Baudelaire, Henri Bergson, Jacques Lacan, among others, as well as Selma Pereira’s oral narrative and written texts by Nei Clara de Lima.