Tempo para Respirar (Breathing Time)
Maria Nepomuceno
14 September 2012 – 17 March 2013
Photos by Stephen White
With Tempo para Respirar (Breathing Time), Maria Nepomuceno creates a fantastical
landscape, filling the Sunley Gallery with colour, texture and sound. You are invited to
explore this otherworldly terrain – relax in the hammock, explore the vines and
volcanoes, listen to the sounds of breath and of the sea.
Nepomuceno’s work reflects the mixture of native, African and European cultures in
contemporary Brazil. The thousands of colourful beads are used to decorate elaborate
costumes for the famous carnival in Rio de Janiero. The large mats of woven straw are
created by craftspeople in northern Brazil. Nepomuceno has encouraged them to
develop new uses for their traditional techniques.
Four primary elements make up Nepomuceno’s sculptures – beads, ropes, woven straw,
and objects. These represent the basic forms of geometry: point, line, plane and volume.
They also have a bodily connection, to cells, connective tissue, skin and organs.
Nepomuceno creates her complex sculptural forms from spiralling rope or strands of
beads. The spiral contains opposites – tension and relaxation, contraction and
expansion, movement and stillness.
The participation of the community is key to Tempo para Respirar (Breathing Time). Local
residents have exchanged old ropes to be incorporated in the work. Artists and
craftspeople have formed a Studio Group, creating some of the spiralling forms visible in
the installation, while ceramic beads were created in a series of public workshops. The
work is completed when you enter it.
To make the work enjoyable for all visitors we are booking schools into timed slots with
the work. You will be allocated 30 minutes or an hour depending on the size of your
group. Please take no more than 8 students on to the work at a time. One adult must be
with the students in the work as well. If a child has a carer or one-to-one support they
should accompany them in the work. Please prepare your group for the piece and ensure
that you manage your time in the work effectively so that all children have a turn.
Discussion Questions:
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Listen to the sounds in the piece. What do they remind you of?
How do the sounds make you think differently about the work? About the gallery?
What do you think this piece is made from?
How do you think it was made?
Is the piece of work ‘by’ the artist if several other people contributed to it?
Are they artists too?
Why do you think it is called Breathing Time?
Are there parts of the work you can’t see? Where do you think they go?
Go into the piece. Are you part of the artwork? How does it feel?
Artist biography:
Born in 1976 in Rio de Janeiro, Maria Nepomuceno studied painting and drawing at the
prestigious Parque Lage visual arts school before studying industrial design at the
University of Rio de Janeiro and art and philosophy at the School of Visual Arts in Rio de
Janeiro. Maria Nepomuceno is one of a young generation of Brazilian artists championed
by A Gentil Carioca, the dynamic downtown Rio de Janeiro gallery founded by artists
Marcio Botner, Laura Lima and Ernesto Neto. In 2010 Nepomuceno presented an
acclaimed solo exhibition at Magasin 3 in Stockholm. Her work has been featured in
exhibitions internationally in cities including Paris, New York, Berlin, Amsterdam, Milan,
Los Angeles and Cologne, and she has shown extensively in Brazil. Maria Nepomuceno
will have a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Rio de Janeiro in 2013.
While you wait…
Look around you. Behind the desk you’ll see another artwork:
Michael Craig-Martin, Turning Pages, 2010, Neon
Turning Pages greets visitors as they enter the building. This version of the piece was
created specially for the opening of Turner Contemporary. The original version was
displayed on the façade of Margate library in the 1970s to mark the retirement of a long
serving librarian.
Craig-Martin works with a variety of different media and is known for his exploration of
‘what makes something a piece of art?’
This is the only permanent installation at Turner Contemporary.
Discussion Questions:
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Michael Craig-Martin had the idea for this piece, but someone else made it to his
design. Should artists make their own work? Is he still the artist of this piece?
What does the neon remind you of?
Can you make any connections between this piece and Margate?
What place do books have in art? In modern life?