Museum of Enchantment is a performance and visual arts project where we are challenged to think about the construction of a museum as a performance – a visual arts collection where the body offers itself as a guide to the reinvention of colonial memory. However, how can we establish a relationship between Brazilian and Portuguese culture through enchantment? What a museum of enchantment might be? A collection where the body offers itself as a guide to enchantments, the coming together of hypnosis and soccer, fado and levitation, unlikely encounters between figures of Brazilian and Portuguese culture. A museum that is the same size as the body, a museum for the culture the body carries within itself, a performance inseparably linked to an installation.
The project was launched by Rita Natálio, based on her Master’s research at the Center of Subjectivity of PUC-SP, with the support of Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation from Portugal, and advised by Professor Peter Pál Pelbart. For this project, she invited Joana Levi, a director from Rio de Janeiro, as a co-curator and co-director. Eduardo Verderame was invited to work with the exhibition design; Teresa Silva was invited as performer, Marta Mestre provided research support and, along with the crew, they outlined an interlinked creative process with a network of various artists from Portugal and Brazil, also called “enchantment donors”. Since 2014, the following artists were part of the project: André Lepecki, Bruno Rezende & Claudinho Dias, Fábio Zuker, Icaro Ferraz Vidal Junior, João Penoni, Júlia de Carvalho Hansen, Gustavo Ciríaco, Helena Katz, Laura Erber, Letícia Novaes, Marcela Levi, Paulo Bruscky, Peter Pál Pelbart, Suely Rolnik, as well as André E. Teodósio, Ana Gandum, Ana Borralho& João Galante, Gonçalo Tocha, Miguel Pereira e Rita Brás.
This project received an award granted by the 10th edition Funarte Redes Artes Visuais Prize and premiered in October of 2014 at the Museu de Arte Moderna of Rio de Janeiro. In June of 2015, it was invited for an artistic residency during the Festival Internacional de Teatro Expressão Ibérica in Porto. The artist-in-residence program offered by Centre International des Récollets, selected the project for a 3 months long artistic residency in Paris. It was presented at CAIXA São Paulo in December of 2015.