Interview: Luciane Chermann
Luca Curci talks with Luciane Chermann during FUTURE LANDSCAPES, third appointment of BORDERS Art Fair 2020, at THE ROOM Contemporary Art Space and at Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello.

Luciane Chermann is a Psychologist with Master in Semiotics, PhD in Sciences and Post doctorate in Cognitive Sciences with the research “Semiotics in the art of drawing”. Living and working in São Paulo, she develops her work within her latest research in cognitive semiotics that explores any type of change becoming evident and predominant characteristics of the work. The lines draw her gaze through sculptures, painting, installations and videos. The leitmotif is the human being and its issues in the contemporary times, which involves our transformative societies.

Luca Curci – What are you currently working on?
Luciane Chermann – I am working with a concept that any change becomes the predominant feature of the job. And the lines are always the guiding thread of the work through sculptures, installation, videos… The human being and the issues that permeate his existence in contemporary society are at the center of my interest. I think through drawing. Drawing is not only a medium circumscribed by pencil and paper, but it is also in the lines of thought, in the look that frames a scene in a film, in the conception of a canvas or sculpture, in the architecture of an installation, in short. Inspiration always comes from everyday facts that occur in society.

LC – What is art for you?
LC – For me, art is much more the process than the product. It is creation, a state of consciousness that allows us to seek answers and to pose questions to ourselves and to each other. Art is a passion and a special need, but to live from art requires courage and determination.

LC – What’s your background? What is the experience that has influenced your work the most?
LC – I have been drawing since I was a child, and the human figure has always been the center of my work. I like to watch people. I found that I like to translate that into art. I did not choose to dedicate myself entirely to art in my youth. I believe that I never had the necessary incentive to make this skill a profession, so I first developed an academic career, but art permeated my days, my travels, and my reading. It was at the age of 50 in a two-year period in Paris that I decided that art was my vocation and today it is my most important activity.

LC – What do you think about the concept of this festival? How did it inspire you?
LC – The theme “Borders Festival” and especially the one of the appointment I was part, “Future Landscapes”, is totally within the issues that touch me and that I have thought and addressed in the narratives of my work. I believe that the vision you had for building the festival is not only contemporary and humanistic, but it encompasses a vision of the perspective of the future, and this was an important differential.

LC – We were attracted by your last artistic production, has the video presented been created for the festival or as a part of preexisting work?
LC – The film sent to “Future Landscapes” was produced in 2019, on a study and research trip between Venice, Firenze and Carrara. The cellphone camera works for me like a pencil and notepad where I capture scenes. In this film I made with these images I imagined that I would be totally within what the festival proposed. The French Filmmaker Alexandre Astruc spoke in camera-pencil, in his book “Du stylo à la caméra – et de la caméra au stylo: écrits 1942-1984” and I think that is exactly the meaning of what I do.

LC – What do you think about the organization of our event?
LC – The organization of the event was exemplary from the beginning. The quick correspondence and the helpful and polite staff.

LC – Do you think ITSLIQUID GROUP can represent an opportunity for artists?
LC – I believe that these expositions that Itsliquid promotes are an opportunity for the socialization and internationalization of art, and I like that, the contact with different cultures and visions. Often artists are cast in their countries dependent on galleries and with unnecessary prejudices about where to exhibit.