Dandara Catete

The vortex of History, activated by the energy produced under the heat of the present's battle, establishes over bodies an enduring state of opposition between past and future forces. As a result of this dialectical process, the organic and symbolic structures cultivated in the course of life – both by nature and tradition – spin over time and time again, thus engendering new creatures, an amorphous ensemble of parts (a debris of some sort), or the anomalous seed of a shape yet to come.

 

Syreni Mollusca, the project artist Dandara Catete developed during a residency at Tabacalera, in Madrid, sets in motion a technology designed and programmed to blend male and female body "parts" into one single entity, therefore sentencing the collapse of the very architecture of power from which those highly ideologically charged bodies once emerged and acquired shape. As labour defines our roles in society, forging some of the most perverse archetypes ever produced by western civilization, Dandara orchestrates a promiscuous and disturbing symphony of sound, cloth and concrete, unveiling a new organism that defies the very nature of gender in contemporary societies. 

 

By assuming technology operates as an extension of our bodies – some sort of limb, if you wish –, could one perhaps identify "gender-oriented devices" as belonging either to a male or a particular female social realm? Possibly yes, one might argue, although what triggers the artist's engine is the very opposite of mechanical separation between bodies and genders.

 

Averse to the idea of consolidating symbolic systems as they appear, Dandara will turn on a mechanism that question the genesis of such dual approach. And the question she poses on our shoulders – and ultimately on our laborious minds – challenges the very notion of creation, or, alternatively, mixes up the economy chain operation in an attempt to reassess value, or the worth of male and female labour force.

 

In this puzzled installation, the artist confronts us with two elements: a cocoon and a concrete mixer. The dialogue established between the two is one of silence and violence. As the suspended vessel, made of fiber mesh and concrete, silently screams from the boundaries of an inner battle between the private and the public sphere (or the domestic and the urban spheres), the civil construction machinery produces a relentless, blasting cry of agony, echoing the long-lasting struggle between the male and female bodies and their social fate—as well as that of all non-binary beings on earth—since time immemorial; since Eve ate the apple, conditioning the original misdemeanour to her foremost frailty, therefore releasing Adam from any significant part in the unfolding History of female guilt and domination. 

 

From the interior of the uterus-like technology – a mechanical womb processing pieces of clothing as a laundry machine would do – the turmoil of political battle is at once set in motion and at stake: a whirlpool of unresolved fights that resonate far beyond the kitchen or the living room, reaching out to the streets, construction sites and the outskirts of our so-called civilization.

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- Bernardo de Souza

  Independent curator

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