Luiz Roque’s ‘Estufa’ trades legibility for emotional impact

The KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Germany is currently presenting Estufa, the first mid-career survey of Brazilian multimedia artist Luiz Roque, which runs from July 06 - October 20, 2024. The exhibition is curated by Léon Kruijswijk, curator of KW Institute for Contemporary Art, who joins STIR in an interview that explores the many themes Roque works with and how the exhibition develops a dialogue between the artist’s works and the architecture of the KW Institute for Contemporary Art.

The ambiguity is also a challenge to traditional art history. If a work is difficult to place in a movement or era it also opens up a new space. – Léon Kruijswijk, curator, KW Institute for Contemporary Art

Video works by the Brazilian artist often extend into real space through site-specific installations, bringing together architecture, modernism and queer biopolitics. However, the articulation of these themes is far from straightforward. For example, in A New Monument (2019), the artist begins with a statement from Nine Points on Monumentality (1943), a paper co-authored by Catalan architect Josep Lluís Sert, French artist and sculptor Fernand Léger and Swiss historian and critic Sigfried Giedion—which criticises the contemporary era’s alleged inability to produce monuments. After this, Roque’s two male protagonists extract a sculptural art piece by celebrated Brazilian artist Amilcar de Castro (1920 - 2002) from a warehouse, take it to an uninhabited area and ‘monumentalise’ it through a ritualistic dance. It is difficult to ascertain exactly when this work is set, though the artist’s hints of a derelict vehicle towards the beginning and the fascinatingly strange costumes of his protagonists suggest that this might be taking place in a post-apocalyptic era. As Kruijswijk argues, “In [Roque’s] practice, ambiguity is important…and this sense of ambiguity is itself queer.” Kruijswijk explains that Roque’s video works simultaneously feel familiar and alien. He believes that the ambiguous, liminal quality that this offering of contemporary art possesses is queer because it opposes structures surrounding everything from narrative to pacing to the identities of his protagonists. The curator tells STIR that “[it is about] getting rid of certain boxes and categories and making things unintelligible.” Kruijswijk continues, saying, “The ambiguity is also a challenge to traditional art history. If a work is difficult to place in a movement or era it also opens up a new space.”

Kruijswijk and the KW Institute team have taken great care to set up the art exhibition to extend Roque’s works beyond the screen. In the first two rooms, the team applied a finish to the walls that mirror the look of the concrete floor. They intended to transport the audience to the warrens of a brutalist city. In another room, where the video installation White Year (2013) is playing, Kruijswijk and the team applied a mustard yellow film to the windows, reflecting the predominant colour in the video art piece. In the video, the protagonist passes through an underground clinic and the curator believes that the exhibition space resonates with this slightly unnerving environment.

The multimedia art exhibition in Berlin treats audiences to moving-image sequences in a series of strange, speculative worlds. Roque’s narratives open themselves up to interpretation, inviting viewers to reconsider film, its relationship to space and how the two can be combined to create experiences that are more emotional than legible.

‘Estufa’ is on at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art from July 06 - October 20, 2024.