Lygia Clark: Body Memory

A documentary on the 'relational objects' of Lygia Clark (Brazil), directed by Mario Carneiro in Rio de Janeiro, 1984. This rare video-work has been kindly lent by Guy Brett.

After Clark's prominent participation in the neoconcrete movement, in the company of her friend Hélio Oiticica, she went on to create ephemeral objects to be held in one´s hands. Her relational objects from the early sixties were conceived as "living organisms" which take on form and meaning through their contact with the body of the spectator. Withdrawn from all possible financial speculation, they are fabricated from cheap, renewable materials. She then realized the "Máscaras sensoriais" (1967), which demand an increasingly intense sensorial and psychic investment from the spectator.

The basic attitude in Clark´s work is anti-mechanical and biological. In the 1970s, she became increasingly interested in the therapeutic possibilities of art. Her later interactive works contain elements of Happening and Performance, but are more of an attempt to move along the fine line between temporally- and spacially-fixed art on the one hand, and psychotherapy on the other. From 1978 on, she dedicated herself solely to her practice as psychoanalyst.

Biography: Born in 1920 in Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, Brazil. Died in 1988 in Rio de Janeiro. At the age of 27, she studied with the landscape-architect Roberto Burle Marx in Rio de Janeiro; 1950-52 with Arpad Szènes and Fernand Léger in Paris. 1952 exhibition of abstract painting in the Ministério da Educaçao e Cultura in Rio de Janeiro; 1953 participation in the Biennial of São Paulo. 1964 participant in the "Grupo Frente", from which the Concretism movement in Rio de Janeiro emerged. 1954-58 series of paintings which are concerned with Constructivist parameters. 1955 and 1957 participation in the Biennial of São Paulo and 1957 in the I Exposiçao Nacional de Arte Concreto in Rio de Janeiro; 1959 signer of the Neo-Concretism Manifest. After 1959, use of objects in which the observer is actively integrated, especially after 1965 with Happenings and Performances. 1970-75 position as instructor at the Sorbonne in Paris. Retrospektives: 1986 Paço Imperial do Rio de Janeiro together with Hélio Oiticica; 1987 Museu de Arte Contemporânea da Universidade de São Paulo. Exhibitions: 1959,1961,1963 and 1967 Bienal de São Paulo; 1960, 1962 and 1968 Biennale di Venezia; 1960 "Konkrete Kunst" in Zürich; 1964 Signals Gallery, London

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Lygia Clark: Body Memory