The Autonomous Community of Madrid’s CA2M presents the exhibition Pedro Neves Marques. YWY, Visions

May 13, 2021. - The Autonomous Community of Madrid’s CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo presents the exhibition Pedro Neves Marques. YWY, Visions, curated by Rosa Lleó and produced in collaboration with the "La Caixa" Foundation, which will also open simultaneously in Barcelona and Móstoles.

Pedro Neves Marques created a character, an android played by indigenous actress and activist Zahy Guajajara, whom he named YWY, a term that means "country" or "territory" in her indigenous Tupi-Guarani language. Inhabiting a futuristic yet surprisingly familiar Brazil dominated by monocultures, mining and other extractive industries, YWY became a way of questioning expected roles, as well as preconceived notions of indigenism, gender, technology, environmentalism and science fiction.

AN INDIGENOUS ANDROID AS THE STORY’S PROTAGONIST, AS A NARRATIVE MEDIUM AND AS A WORK OF ART.

The co-invention of the character by Neves Marques, a white European author, and Zahy Guajajara, an indigenous native artist from northern Brazil, creates a dynamic that cannot be approached by a single person, but instead requires to be opened up and shared with many different voices, mainly through Guajajara, in her interpretation of what the character means, through the indigenous authors, and also through the non-indigenous accomplices who will contribute to the publication.

As a typical science fiction figure, the android blurs the boundaries between human and non-human beings and, therefore, also between inclusion and exclusion, between what is considered natural and artificial. Committed to world-building strategies, YWY Visions combines science fiction elements with 

Amerindian cosmologies, questioning the notion of a linear path to the future, and presenting instead a conflict of the many worlds and world views between indigenous and white conceptions. In this way, she explores how the pieces can open up and expand preconceived notions beyond postcolonial tensions, neoliberal politics and the ecocide we are currently experiencing.

After having completed Neves Marques’ first two films, the artist asks herself and the director: Who is this woman really? Where does she come from? What does she say about the Western preconceived notions of robots and, at the same time, of a native population’s local way of life? YWY, Visions presents the public with a new phase of the dialogue between Neves Marques and Guajajara, which resulted in a series of new artworks, collaborations, and a publication about the same project by Sternberg Press.

PEDRO NEVES MARQUES

Pedro Neves Marques is an artist and has developed his work in the field of cinema and writing. He has had solo exhibitions at 1646 (The Hague), Castello di Rivoli (Turin), High Line and e-flux (New York), Gasworks (London), Pérez Art Museum (Miami), Museo Colecçao Berardo (Lisbon).

Neves Marques has also exhibited his work at the Liverpool Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial, the Guangzhou Image Triennial, the Tate Modern Film, the Cinema Serpentine, the Kunstverein Hanburg, the Kadist Foundation, the Botín Foundation, the Sculpture Center, the Matadero, the VAL Foundation, the Guangdong Times Museum, the NTU CCA Centre for Contemporary Art, and at film festivals such as the Toronto International Film Festival and the New York Film Festival, among many others.

He has published extensively on art, anthropology and ecology in magazines and journals. He has written two short story collections, and is also co-founder of inhabitants-tv.org, an online channel for experimental news coverage. He has received the Present Future Art Prize at Artissima 2018, and has been a finalist in the Pinchuk Future Generation Art Prize 2021.

His films have won awards at MixBrasil, Sicilia Queer Film Festival, Short Wave, Go Short, and Moscow International Experimental Film Festival. Born in Lisbon, Portugal, he has lived in London, São Paulo and New York.