ART-PRESENTATION: Lygia Pape-Ttéia 1,C

Lygia Pape was an influential iconoclast Brazilian artist and pioneering member of the postwar Avant-Garde. She worked across an expansive range of media, including painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, film, performance, poetry, and installation. She created participatory works that questioned the space between artist and viewer, as well as the social context of art itself.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Moderna Museet Archive

Lygia Pape’s installation “Ttéia 1,C” is on view aat Moderna Museet in Stockholm. As one of the protagonists of the Concrete and Neo-Concrete Movements in Brazil, Lygia Pape has had an unquestionable impact on the development of Conceptual and Non-Figurative aArt. Her “Ttéias” with gold or silver threads are a result of her longstanding interest in liberating the artwork from its static format. Lygia Pape worked in several media, often simultaneously, including painting, woodcuts, sculpture, film and performance. She belonged to the Rio de Janeiro-based Grupo Frente, before signing the Neo-Concrete manifesto in 1959. Lygia Pape transcended boundaries with her occasionally provocative experiments, as in 1967, three years after the military coup, when she showed “Caixa das baratas” in an exhibition organised by her friend Hélio Oiticica. In 1978, she began experiments with arranging strings together with her students. The investigations which took place in the Parque Lage Gardens in Rio de Janeiro were the beginning of the “Ttéias”, although the first installation was not to be realized until 1991. The “Ttéias” are constructed by the geometric installation of gold or silver threads in a space, either from floor to ceiling or across the corner of a room. The groups of thread that course through space are also staggered, and some actually intersect others, literally weaving through the air. Other groups of thread simply appear to intersect. The work blends the real and the imaginary, the interplay of light, the carefully suspended golden threads and perception prompt visitors to participate in the installation. The word ttéia, which Lygia Pape created, alludes to the Portuguese word teia, meaning web, and teteia, a colloquial expression for a graceful and delicate person or thing.

Info: Curator: Matilda Olof-Ors, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm, Duration: 2/2-13/5/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.modernamuseet.se