Odisha Biennale to make Bhubaneshwar breathe more art: René Loui

BHUBANESHWAR: René Loui, 28, was born in Juiz de Fora (Minas Gerais). He lived for six years in the city of Natal (Rio Grande do Norte), located in the northeast of the country, the poorest region in Brazil. His research is in different languages, such as dance, performance art, photography, and video. That is why he described himself as a trans-disciplinary artist. He is particularly interested in the universe of the bodies, differences and real-time construction in dance.

This year René Loui finished his masters in Performing Arts from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. He graduated in Arts and Design in 2013 at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora. Throughout his career with the arts, he has participated in numerous exhibitions, festivals and artistic residencies throughout Brazil, as well as in other countries such as Portugal, Switzerland, France, Holland, Spain and now I come to India.

In 2016, together with the dancer Rozeane Oliveira, René Loui created CIDA –  Coletivo Independente Dependente de Artistas (Independent Artist-Dependent Collective), an alternative nucleus of contemporary dance and performance art based in the city of Natal, whose artistic proposal is to expand the universe of dance through a language own, using the concepts of differentiated body and real-time dramaturgy as a tool for sensitizing the other through art.  In its three years of existence and resistance, CIDA Collective has performed on stages in much of the Brazilian territory, as well as other international stages, developing new possibilities for dance creation in northeastern Brazil.

René Loui has received several awards, including the 8° Rede Nacional – Artes Visuais – FUNARTE (2011), CARNE FRESCA (2013), Klaus Vianna (2015), Conexão Cultura Brasil Intercâmbios (2014), Overseas Culture Interchange (2016 / 2018) and most recently the  Conexão Elefante Cultural (2019). EIn 2018, René was one of six artists selected by CAL – Casa de Cultura da América Latina e pela OEI – Organização dos Estados Iberoamericanos para a Residência Artística Internacional – OCA e também para o Arte Londrina 2019.

Odisha Biennale 2019 – The Illusion (Dec 23-31), is being organized in Bhubaneshwar by Masako Ono, the Odissi dancer of world fame, who is a Japanese national living in Bhubaneshwar.

Following are the excerpts from René Loui’s interview with Asian Community News (ACN) Network correspondent:

Q. What attracted you towards participating in Odisha Biennale 2019?

Ans. I arrived in India just a fortnight ago and I can already see how great this other culture called India is. Everything here is different! At least different according to my references, according to everything I’ve been through. I have already been immersed in other countries with cultures different from mine in Brazil, but nothing as distinct as here, in Odisha.

I was attracted to the call the moment I saw it on the dancing opportunities website. The possibility of this geographical shift for an emerging artist like me is the possibility of being seen and heard beyond my race and my color. The theme of this issue is exactly what I am talking about. “Illusion”.

I am a black, gay, Brazilian and living artist trying to penetrate an art circuit that is almost impenetrable. Unfortunately, the Brazilian art circuit is mostly made up of white artists, who live in the southeastern region of the country. For artists like me who live in northeastern Brazil, it’s almost impossible to be seen and heard. We need opportunities like these to be recognized in our cities.

I still intend to dive into the rhythm of the city, but it takes time, knowledge… I really want to live in the city of Bhubaneswar. Here the sounds are different, the images are different, the references are different, the smells are different, the tastes are different. It’s another rhythm that I want to discover calmly in this 40-day immersion.

As little as I could talk to local artists about the pace of culture here in the city, I realized that it is not far from our reality in most cities in Brazil. For example, financial support for art production is also scarce, art production exists, but not as large as it could be if there were more support. Odisha Biennale, as I could see from my first conversations with its creators, is exactly an attempt to make the city of Bhubaneswar breathe more art, to make it easier for art to be produced in the four corners of the world.

Q. Tell us more about your artistic journey.

Ans. In an independent artistic trajectory, understanding myself as a visual artist and as a corporeal artist, I always kept myself immersed in artistic nuclei that had as their main perspective for the creation of the concept of differences, whether or not linked to what is understood as a disability. Both perspectives attract me. I am interested in understanding the world through differences. Pushing me into other ways of relating to the world is already part of my usual creative provocations. In Brazil, I have worked with big dance companies, such as Gira Danca in Natal, and Ekilibrio in Juiz de Fora. In Portugal I had the opportunity to work in partnership with the Grupo Dançando com as Diferenças(Dancing with Differences Group), in Switzerland, I worked with Cie Autotrophe and on a project with Cie Ioannis Mandafounis.

In a journey between the languages ​​of performance and contemporary dance, my work has been developing from an intense search to understand and problematize the predetermined spaces for artists who deal in some way with differences and deficiencies. This has always been, for me, a fair starting point for the questions raised in my work.

The explicit black color in my work speaks of everything I have traveled to this day, in a country full of prejudice, where being black is still a barrier. My creative universes go directly to the space between work, artist, and viewer. My proposal in my works, in addition to an alternative of momentary escape from the realities that Brazil has been directing us, is also to highlight my real sensations, fears, pains, taking into account the ephemeral relationship of the now.

Q. You’re the current Artiste in Residence at Odisha Biennale 2019. Tell us about how you’re collaborating with your Indian counterpart in this program, and what can we hope to see from this collaboration?

Ans. Odisha Biennale’s schedule is starting a little early for me. As an ‘artist in residence’, I arrived 30 days before the official Biennial program began. This will give me time to experience the city, I believe this time is enough to better understand how the city really works, and so I can dance it in my works. The fourth edition of Odisha Biennale features approximately 70 artists from around the world. I look forward to each of these artists arriving so that we can exchange experiences, experiences, and practices. Having contact with each of these artists is a huge opportunity for me. However, a big meeting has already taken place. The artistic director and curator of the Masako Ono festival is a great Japanese choreographer and dancer with whom I already wanted to have contact. Masako invited me to participate in his new work, the dance piece Borderline. I am very happy to have the opportunity to choreograph the same piece and at the same time be on the same show alongside such an important figure for the dance of Japan as well as for the dance of India. The work that Masako has been doing in dance here in the city of Bhubaneswar is gigantic and the Biennial reaffirms that.


5. What have you picked up from your travels through various art centers around Brazil and how are you going to incorporate that in B-Cut?

To talk about how this version of B-Cut will be built in the city of Bhubaneshwar, I think it is very important to start by talking better about where my contact with the work came from. This is a cultural mediation work devised by Mélanie Fréguin during the passage of the Overseas Culture Interchange project through the city of Beirut in Lebanon. I had my first contact with B-Cut just a year after its creation when Melanie invites me to join the project on her Swiss tour. I was invited to be behind the camera, to be the digital look of the work. As a dancer and also as a visual artist I felt very honored with the invitation. Showing dance through video is for me another way of dancing.

Then in Bhubaneshwar, I will be dancing through each of the people who participate in the work. Now, a year after my participation in B-Cut in Switzerland, selected by Odisha Biennale, I bring a portion of Overseas Culture Interchange with me to India. I will do the work in the city of Bhubaneswar as a return to the invitation so generous that I received a year ago. This is my sincerest way of thanks! I find myself continuing the life of the work.

Basically, I’m touring points of Bhubaneswar city with a team to record people dancing through each of these points. B-Cut is a project that talks about the multiple possibilities of dancing. We can all dance! The work, as well as all my work as an artist, defends differences as a power in dance. I see in this residence the reaffirmation of my research over this many years thinking about ways to produce an inclusive dance.

Q. What was your collaboration with visual artiste Nagi Gianni at his “Carte Blanche” Artistic Residence like?

Ans. The project “Carte Bhanche” conceived by visual artist Nagi Gianni, basically consists of occupation of the TOPIC gallery, located in the city of Geneva, Switzerland. For 30 days, Nagi invited other artists to collaborate with his occupation project. During the 7-day period, at Nagi’s invitation, I performed in the gallery, sharing the MARÉ (tide) performance with other young artists, living in the city of Geneva. Each of these artists came from a different nationality. Together we represented Brazil, the United States, Sweden, and Switzerland. It was an amazing experience! The gallery doors were open 24 hours a day for 7 days, where the public was free to come and go. They could see not only complete work but also the process of its creation. In fact, in this project, the process is as important as the final product.

With research started in 2016 MARÉ is the choreographic piece that legitimized the creation of CIDA – Independent Collective Dependent on Artists. Rozeane Oliveira and I presented in this show a kind of mourning followed by rebirth, a hybrid between forgetting and new perspectives. Maré was our first work together on the scene at the CIDA Collective. This show emerges as an allusion to the ways we approach and stereotype the hybrid nature of relating. Transposing the realities of love into the scene is the beginning of everything. A metaphor about the change, at various levels, about the intensities and depths of this complex feeling. Maré talks about the ways of loving. It problematizes through dance discussions about gender, racial issues, alterities and even the violence that exists in abusive relationships, a great Brazilian reality. I still don’t know if there will be time, but I am very interested in making a new version of the TIDE show here in the city of Bhubaneswar, with artists living in the city. Perhaps dance together through the streets of Bhubaneswar.

Q. Odisha has an immensely rich artistic and cultural scene. Any plans for incorporating aspects of Odisha art in your current project and/or future work?

Ans. Odisha has a cultural infinity that makes me very excited to produce! Still not sure how the next steps of this residence will be. Performing through the streets of Bhubaneswar is a big will, but not a must. I need to study the local culture thoroughly to understand what I can and cannot incorporate into my work. Nothing is concrete, everything can be transformed. I am trying 100% freedom and support to do my work here. This is the most interesting one! The Biennial organization funded my trip, provided staff to help me with my residency, when is possible, of course, and even offers me a workspace for my body practices.

I am taking advantage of my spare time in this residence, as well as taking advantage of this geographical shift, to begin the construction of new solo work. Five years after the construction of my first solo work, the Ethereal show, I begin to develop in the city of Bhubaneswar the research for the construction of the show RAIVA, which appears as an extension of the first work, and just like Ethereal, emerges from an urgency. This new ground is the need to speak, through art, about prejudices, stigmas and precast images. The show already has a premiere scheduled for the first half of 2020, in Brazil and will continue the issues exposed in my first solo. I want this to be the second piece of a trilogy yet to be created for me in partnership with the other artists of the Independent Artist-Dependent Collective. Five years ago, I had the opportunity to go to Madeira Island in Portugal and there I could make a residence with a format very similar to this one. The residency resulted in the Ethereal show that was responsible for bringing my work to various countries. I am very excited about the possible results of residing in Bhubaneswar.

Q. Anything specific that you have picked up from your stay in Odisha and your interaction with Odia people and artists here?

Ans. I believe my stay in Odisha will give me many positive experiences. I look forward to returning to Brazil and sharing with other Brazilian artists some of what I am living here. I still want to have more contact with local artists. This is only my first week here, but I can already see that cultural riches are inexhaustible. I’m sure this residence will change my artistic life forever!

Q. Any message for Odia artistes in particular and Odia youth in general?

Ans. As distant as your dreams may seem, persist! Living from art may seem like an impossible task, but it is not. Take every opportunity that comes your way! Enjoy local art production, it is as important as production in other locations!
Living as an artist is hard, I know, but it’s also very rewarding when your work is valued, as mine is now!