Ana Maria Tavares finds her source of inspiration in the architectural grammar of the modern city. She employs materials such as steel, glass and mirrors to make structures that resemble street furniture or architectural fittings. Recontextualised in her installations, such motifs come to form puzzles or mazes for the visitor to explore. Tavares is interested in the impractical possibilities that are locked inside functional objects and, in this sense, her practice stands at the border of sculpture and design.
In the recent edition of Arte/Cidade, São Paulo, 2002 – an ambitious project, part group exhibition, part political and social manifesto, featuring numerous site-specific art works scattered in the desperately poor east side of the city – Tavares presented Labirinto, a dramatic architectural intervention in a former textile factory that hosted the main part of the exhibition. Her work comprised a complex network of walkways and spiral staircases that passed through floors and ceilings, connecting different areas and three different levels of the building. The Piranesian structure functioned as a device that offered a radically different way of navigating and looking at the building, while also trapping the viewer in an independent system of circulation around the show.
For The Straight or Crooked Way, Ana Maria Tavares has created Kensington Maze, a work that is in the spirit of Labirinto. Looking closely at the Royal College of Art galleries, Tavares has designed a series of walkways that present new possibilities for circulation, overriding the conventional navigation of the space imposed by the existing architecture of the galleries. The walkway, made from scaffolding components such as handrails, open grid plates and scaffold towers, winds through the galleries, exploiting voids between the floors and linking the spaces by means of bridges and stairs.
Ana Maria Tavares in collaboration with Pedro Perez Machado, design for Kensington Maze, 2003.
Support for the production of work by Ana Maria Tavares provided by the American Center Foundation
Further information:
http://www.britocimino.com.br/ing/artistas/tavares/i-tavares.htm