Ernesto Neto – Nosso Barco Tambor Terra
Museum of Art and Technology, Lisbon, Portugal
May 02 – October 07, 2024

Ernesto Neto, one of Brazil’s most international and well-known artists, presents an immersive installation that evokes the crossing of cultures between different continents.

Curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, Nosso Barco Tambor Terra (our boat drum earth) is one of the largest sculptures Ernesto Neto has ever made. Its form is the outcome of months of work, in close dialogue with MAAT’s architectural space and the museum’s surroundings. The installations are richly imbued with history and symbolism as the departure point for the caravels that set sail for what would come to be known as the Americas.

Using images of sails and materials, such as canvas and ropes, that are generally associated with transatlantic voyages, Ernesto Neto creates a set of unprecedented installations that occupy the venue’s different dimensions. To create the work, Neto used mostly chintz, a relatively cheap cotton fabric that is extremely common in Brazil, often printed with brightly coloured Flowers and plants. The fabric was cut into strips and crocheted by various assistants, based on a technique developed over the years in the artist’s studio in Rio de Janeiro: atelienave.

The material has been used to create the cells that together create the sculpture. The work’s overall plan is developed freehand, through tests and adjustments supported by specific software that allows for precision but also sufficient malleability to adapt to the specificities of the space at the time of mounting in situ.

“For his first exhibition at MAAT, those references materialise in a large-scale sculpture entitled Nosso Barco Tambor Terra (our boat drum land), whose shape and name can simultaneously suggest a ship, a primordial beast, a forest or even, and more likely, all of those things and infinite others at the same time, because the artist portrays the world as a whole, that “Gaia world”, as he defines it: ancestral, pre-colonial and even pre-human – a planet obviously shaped by violent events and occurrences, such as the enforced displacement of millions of enslaved people during the colonial processes that marked history and the relationship between Portugal and Brazil, among many other countries; but also a planet where, from the mix of races, populations and peoples emerge surprising cultures and worldviews whose strength and beauty one must recognise, reaffirm and celebrate.” – writes the curator Jacopo Crivelli Visconti for the exhibition text.

In recent years, alongside his activity as an artist, Neto has also devoted himself to percussion. Throughout the exhibition, the sculpture, which incorporates a series of instruments, will be periodically activated by a musical programme, devised by musicians and groups from various parts of the world, with particular emphasis on the rhythms of African and Asian diasporas.

Symbolically, the combination of rhythms and beats in Nosso Barco Tambor Terra (our boat drum earth) is an antidote to the multitude of languages spoken around the world, alluding to the possibility of finding, in specific moments and contexts, common languages that allow communication that transcends the verbal and facilitates authentic and profound encounters. Consistent with the artist’s desire to create a truly collective and diverse work, various drums from a range of provenances that inhabit the installation can also be played by visitors to the exhibition.

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