Corpo de Delito: Centro Cultural da Justiça Federal
On display at the Federal Justice Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, curated by Rafael Mayer, the exhibition "Corpo de Delito" (Body of Crime) presented Panmela Castro's performance in the artwork "Caminhar" (Walking). In it, the artist steps into a basin of red floor paint that drips and marks the floor as she walks. The red mark denounces the feminicide rates and dissipates along the way, much like the months fade the memory of the deceased women, as they are forgotten and neglected.
Curator's text:
Art and Science seem like distinct and separate fields of knowledge. It is inevitable to think that figures like Leonardo Da Vinci connected these areas or simply didn't distinguish them. It is certain that imagination is an indispensable tool in the exercise of both. And technique transits the nebulous border between one and the other. Art, Science and Technique are deeply intertwined like threads composing a fabric. The purpose of this work is precisely to show the intersections, encounters, distinctions, and dynamic fusions between science and art. And for that, we will navigate through an unsuspected area in its scientific rigor and social consequences: Forensic Medicine and its maximum investigative expression: the corpus delicti (body of the crime). The use of experts in legal disputes has a long and recurring history that goes back centuries. As for the term "corpus delicti," it refers to a legal concept related to the set of physical or material evidence that proves the existence of a crime, or rather, "everything that can be seen, heard, touched, felt in general (...) is the body," the human body or object, the body of the crime. In forensic sciences, everything is a body. "Color is in the body, sensation is in the body, not in the air," Deleuze would say about Cézanne. "Sensation is what is painted." The current exhibition "Corpo de Delito" (Body of Crime) brings together the artists Ana Biolchini, Antonio Bokel, Beanka Mariz, Dora Smék, Eric Collette, Liana Nigri, Mayer, Panmela Castro, Paul Setúbal, and Rodrigo Pedrosa around this sensation and proposes a sensitive dialogue between art and science, between life and death, between contemporary artworks and the collection of the Wax Museum of the Afrânio Peixoto Institute of Forensic Medicine and the Cultural Center of the Civil Police. The highlight of this collection is the wax sculptures by the doctor-artist Alberto Baldissara. It is a meeting of bodies that tense the atmosphere of art and science. It is the body - the artwork, the artist, the institution. Forensic sciences follow the dogma: "every contact leaves a trace." May the contact between art and science create the most beautiful of drawings.
