VIDEO:Isaac Julien-Lina Bo Bardi Un Meraviglioso Groviglio

“Time is not linear, it is a marvellous entanglement in which, at any moment, ends can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end”.

With “Lina Bo Bardi – A Marvellous Entanglement”, visual artist and filmmaker Isaac Julien pays homage to a major 20th century architect who developed her innovative, unconventional form of expression following her post-WW2 emigration to Brazil from Italy. The work traces an itinerary through the architect’s Brazilian projects from the 1960s to the 1980s. Bo Bardi herself accompanies us on this journey, performed by Brazilian actresses Fernanda Montenegro and Fernanda Torres, mother and daughter in real life, who in the film become the mature and the younger version of the architect.

Isaac Julien has conceived installation as a total work of art, from the curtains to the seats, visitors can immerse themselves in scenes from Bo Bardi’s life, projected across nine screens. With both actresses simultaneously present in some of the scenes, both the supposed linearity of the biographical journey and the boundary between fiction and reality are poetically questioned.

The title is a quote taken from one of the most well-known and evocative passages of Lina Bo Bardi’s letters («Time is not linear, it is a marvellous entanglement in which, at any moment, ends can be chosen and solutions invented, without beginning or end»). Here it is interpreted by two of the greatest actresses of Brazilian cinema and theatre, Fernanda Montenegro and her daughter Fernanda Torres.

Tecnologia pré-histórica / Prehistoric Technology (Lina Bo Bardi — A Marvellous Entanglement), 2019. Endura Ultra photograph facemounted, 180 x 240 x 7.5 cm © Isaac Julien. Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.