"The places of Art can keep us away from fear, and when we are less afraid, we are less evil."
Jean-Luc Lagarce

Which way to the places of art? Which way do the signs point? Are there places where art does not belong? Are there places where, even without permission, art invades with tentacular roots, like those of millennial trees, tearing, destroying, occupying, transforming, leaving everything around them a mess? Everything that is real, and everything that isn’t?

What is art’s place, after all?

The Communal Area at Sesc Santos, without question, is one of them. Just past the door, an imposing fake Amazon forest welcomes visitors to the 5th edition of the Mirada. It’s the installation entitled Topografías: Utopía y Distopías (Topographies: Utopias and Dystopias), by Mapa Teatro, from Colombia. "This place slips into the forest, its voids, holes, burrows, entanglements, animals, images and scripts (...). Here we have weeds; some are real and some are fake like the plants Made in China, which are found across the world. They exist, insist and persist here. A nonexistent and imaginary place in a suppressed notion of a forest", writes Mirada curator Ricardo Muniz Fernandes, who extends an invitation:

"Come in and discover the ontological tranquility of knowing that there is a thicket where we can hide, love, kill and die. This smelly and fertile place – just like a mangrove – where all humans are animals. A topos of the possibility of us being savages, civilized, ignorant, crazy, bureaucrats and jaguars."

Created specifically for this year’s Mirada, this is the first time the installation is being presented. Pay attention to details: the passage of time can be felt through the lighting. It simulates 24 hours in 2 hours. There are also some scattered screens showing dystopian images, such as science fiction movies, and some from our real and almost extinct world, like that of a jaguar. You can also hear birds singing in the background – in fact, you almost expect one of them to land on one of the installation’s branches. Could it be? When it comes to art, why not?

Alberto Cerri and André Venancio
Sesc Online Editors