Margit Leisner

Posted on by Gris

 Margit Leisner was born in Curitiba in 1971. She graduated in Visual Arts at the F + F Schule für Kunst und Mediendesign Zürich. Her artistic practice concerns contexts related to performance art culture and its possibilities as an open system in the field of arts. Curatorial practice is a key to her work. Since 2014 she runs Galeria Farol Arte e Ação, a conteporary art gallery devoted to the notion of mobility. She lives and works in Curitiba, Brasil.

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“In 2007 I flew to Rio for 10 days to work. One night  I landed in an artist talk at Capacete in Santa Teresa.  Amazing 0.2: Helmut, who I had met 5 years before in Faxinal das Artes – and never seen since then immediately recognizes me asking the question of freshly gone times: – What are you doing here, woman?

Amazing 0.1: as I was leaving the venue someone literally fell on my arms. I hold that living body with surprise. It was the poet Alex Hamburger. – Nice to meet you!

I flew back to my hometown in Curitiba, did not even unpack, a week later I was in Rio at Casa da Denise for 15 days, stayed 20. And in this way I would spend the next 3 years migrating among the houses within the complex of Capacete and also in São Paulo at Copan where thanks to a residency grant I have started the open series As férias do cineasta / The vacations of the filmaker.

For a lonely ganger with a rather unusual background at that time – specially for local standards; Capacete meant a field of perspectives where I could embody and affirm the practice of an errant thinker on a daily basis. Capacete is a kind of  earthly interface of mental spaces, it is connecting ideas and positions in art sustained by otherness, pleasure, randomness, void, presence, action.  To be happy as an artist with a jewel of references and still the taste of morning coffee with Denise and Helmut. Amazing 0.0, projects vibrating on my table right now are still completely connected to people who I have encountered and to the questions that have developed since then. Love. Relax. Capacete.”

Mabe Bethonico

Posted on by Gris

“I teach at UFMG since 2002. In 2018 I will be living in Geneva, in a sabbatical leave. The making of my book was supported by Helmut, who followed up the construction, supportingly, until the end. The research was done for over a year in Geneva, and it is presented in the introduction of the book itself: it is a project of translation, that later developed in an exhibition in São Paulo, where the book played a main role. The work was done away from Rio and somewhat autonomously from Capacete’s space, and I came to Rio to launch it and later do debate about it. There was a nice engagement/ debate after the presentation and it was of course, pleasant as usual, with great culinary, thought especially for the day. I am thankful to Helmut, to have supported such adventurous enterprise, which involved a long production. The book came out as part of the series Livro para…”