(this page was last updated in August 2023)
Divinópolis, Brazil, 1980
Lives and works in Moeda, Brazil
PIPA Prize 2023 nominee
I am an artist, gardener and educator. I live in Moeda, Minas Gerais. At the center of my interests are the visual arts, music, performance and ecology. I work from materials I played with as a child. I revisit stories of my grandmothers and uncles in the rural environment. For example, we used the dry fruit of the jequitibá to make the orange sucker; today, this fruit appears in my works. Not only the concrete raw material, then, but also many memories and affections were filling this experience, in which all things talk to each other. In my creative processes, I appropriate raw materials spontaneously made available by nature and resize them, in order to reveal the voices that are latent in their structures. Interventions in these materials seek to highlight their organic aspect and are conceived as a collaborative process that I carry out in partnership with nature. The paths of art have always crossed in my life and over time I have come to perceive the actor as a singer, the singer as a gardener, the gardener as a visual artist… This whole was building me up. This whole stimulates me, guides me and makes me exist. I cannot specify exactly when I became an artist who struggles with different languages. It’s something that comes to me from my ancestors. It’s something organic. A little bit of everything, a lot together and mixed.
Website: instagram.com/alexandrebianchini.arte/
Video produced by Do Rio Filmes exclusively for PIPA 2023:
“ALEXANDRE BIANCHINI (Outro Quilombo – Mario Gil / Paulo César Pinheiro)”, 2016. Duration: 4’37”
“Dandô – Alexandre Bianchini e Ricardo Rodrigues – Serra Grande (Ricardo Rodrigues)”, 2016. Duration: 3’19”
Formation
2013
– Singing, Bachelor’s degree in Music, Bituca: Universidade de Música Popular
Group shows
2022-2023
– “Ainda que tardia: Brasil futuros”, Curated by Fernanda Brito, Guilherme Trielli Ribeiro, Luiz Gustavo Carvalho, Verona Segantini, Museu Casa Padre Toledo, Tiradentes, Minas Gerais, Brazil
2019
– “Pindowa”, Artisans from the Pindowa project, from the communities on the rice road (Amazon) in Maranhão, Curated by Renato Imbroisi, Instituto Tomie Ohtake, São Paulo, Brazil
Performances
2015-2023
– “Terra, Baú e Verso”, with Ricardo Rodrigues (violinist and songwriter)
2015-2017
– “Projeto Dandô”, Dércio Marques Music Circuit, with Ricardo Rodrigues
2014-2015
– “Caminho de Pedras”, with Matheus Fillipi (violinist and songwriter)
2013-2015
– “Na trilha do menino”, with Borandá (Clowning)
2010-2012
– “Êta boi!”, with Expressão (Street Theatre)
2007-2010
– “Inimaginável mas Real”, with Alkmystas
Lectures and workshops
2022
– “O sentir, o sonoro, a natureza”, workshop held by UFMG in partnership with the Festival Artes Vertentes, Museu Casa Padre Toledo, Tiradentes, Brazil (November 24 to 26)
2019
– “Sons da natureza”, 36th Paralela Design, Oca, Ibirapuera Park, São Paulo, Brazil (August 17th)
Awards
2016
– “Comenda Consciência Negra 2016”, Câmara Municipal de Divinópolis, Brazil
2012
– “De Olho no Palco” Prize, Performance with the Vila Capistrana band, Bituca: Universidade de Música Popular
“Retrato do artista quando muitos”, 2021. Duration: 53’11”
“Músico recicla e reproduz em instrumentos os sons da natureza”, 2014. Duration: 2’55”
The sculptures in this series are a result of research on the imagination and memory. In them, I approach natural objects that lost their social use. On one side, leftovers, residues, debris, scraps; on the other side, materials collected in nature (seeds, dry fruit, woods, rocks, pigments, fibers, tinctures). From these materials and through dreaming and divagation, I give a visual appeal to allegories that combine life stories and collective memory.
- “DIVAGATIONS ON MATERIAL INTIMACY”, 2022
This series stems from a research that involves designs on the ground made with raw materials from the ground. After collecting, benefiting, and organizing materials found in the transition zone between the Savannah and the Atlantic Rain Forest, I define a piece of ground as a support and I prepare it, for example, by sifting earth and spreading seeds over which I install plates of glass. The markings on the ground that result from the action of time are always welcome and constitute an element of composition. The design, therefore, begins to happen at the choice and preparation of the support and ends only when the composition comes into balance. I have the habit of photographing these ephemeral designs and producing visual essays from them.
The works from this series were and are created from family stories, highlighting my Afro-Brazilian roots. The objects that I line up in these sculptures are part of a collection of daily objects that I inherited from relatives and friends. I have these objects as raw materials and I seek to bring them into the artistic field, building images that hope to deconstruct and reframe the silencing imposed by our racist society.
The research with sonic sculptures was stimulated by my participation in the project “Terra, Baú e Verso” [Earth, Trunk, and Verse] (2016), dedicated to the performance of songs written by Ricardo Rodrigues. I interpret the songs as a musician (singer, guitar maker, and percussionist) and as a visual artist (sculptor and scenographer). The sonic sculptures made it possible to inscribe into the songs, during the act of performance, sonic and visual designs. The way I manipulate and expose these sculptures in performance spaces results in singing, acting, scenography. Transposing borders between languages and transgressing their norms are the principles that guide the construction of these hybrid works.
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