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The secret history of umbrellas!
ALD Automotive Brasil, together with CONTRAFLUXO, an urban laboratory developed with the objective of studying mobility and urban behavior, invited the resident artists from “CasaSETE”, a creative house at ABC Paulista, to represent urban signs and symbols in umbrella prints and their relations with the city.
CONTRAFLUXO is an urban lab, its purpose is to understand, experiment and co-create new perspectives regarding mobility and urban behavior having three research pillars: people, spaces and technologies. The initiative of this project emerge from these pillars which meet our values.
In addition to the researches carried out on mobility in order to understand the types of transport modality, their functionalities, the impacts they cause on society and on the environment, the interest in investigating signs, symbols, rites and myths that impact the construction of their culture and locomotion needs on the individual and society.
The project "The secret history of umbrellas" deals with the following proposal:
Observe mobility, from a human, intimate and personal perspective where the small objects of our daily life that enable our mobility on a reduced scale are the focus of study objects that carry stories and stories that when told, perpetuate somehow from a historical period to a small family tradition.
So, what is the story that our objects can tell us about mobility? What story do these objects tell about ourselves as a society?
INVISIBILITY OF THE OBJECT: UMBRELLA
The umbrella, an object that incorporates a technology capable of allowing the individual to move in the rain under its protection has its notoriety only when we need it. In the moments when the rain does not appear we drop the umbrella in the corners as if it had no story to tell or function to fulfill.
In the past, umbrellas were commonly used by women to protect from the sun, giving them a secondary function but also to protect the rain.
In other periods the umbrella was a symbol of status, with handmade production and jewelry refinement with metals and precious stones.
The intervention sought to give visibility to the umbrellas, with works by resident artists of “Casa SETE”.
ARTISTIC PRODUCTION
Together with the “CONTRAFLUXO”, we invited the resident artists of "CasaSETE" to conceive arts that would serve as prints for the umbrellas in order to represent in some way the mobility, the individual, the city and the people. We believe that working with artists from the “Grande ABC”, which is not a privileged region in terms of mobility, could provide interesting reflections on the theme and make perfect sense with the proposal to go "against the flow' of choosing renowned artists, proposing a personal and inviting reflection on the theme of mobility.
Being these artists:
OBJECT PRODUCTION
With the developed arts we seek to realize the work with the production of umbrellas using the art of building manually and that today has lost its place because of the process of industrialization.
In “São Paulo”, Aldo Grecco maintains his umbrella store as the 6th generation. Where he produces these by hand and carries out repairs preserving stories from a time when umbrellas were objects that ennobled people, being used even as a wedding bouquet and sold in reputable boutiques.
Grecco then produced the umbrellas in his studio, preserving all this history and being the only handmade umbrella producer still active in São Paulo.
INTERVENTION
The work was exhibited in two locations - at the ALD Automotive headquarters in Brazil, inside the office for a few weeks and also in front of “CasaSETE” for one day. The visual impact of the built form was sought together with the poetics of each work.
The prints created by the artists were printed on individual umbrellas and displayed in a geodesy format where the semantics formed is a globe or a shield. With an idea of artistic grouping forming something larger, passing on the conception that the objects as representation of individuals depend on each other for their perpetuation and existence.
Poetry by Michel Cena7
On rainy days its who creates us and shelters locomotion
On sunny days, it provides comfort, vision.
One way or another, umbrella, is also sunshade
Proposes a temporary area of action,
That even the shadow, for the city that haunts us with your truth,
As an object it also represents the duality of mobility, solitude or loniless.
After all, everyone who moves around the city needs a guard.
If the flow of the umbrella is the enlargement of a field,
We say that, together as shields,
It's time to see it as a proposition of unity.