Shortcoming as historic dimension: The understanding of a critical experience
by Tainá Azeredo.
Text written for the project Art Book.

As opposed to a history told by the ‘winners’, Bruno Moreschi’s edition proposes to select artists that not necessary noted among the great producers of our times. The making of an encyclopedia proposes a historic clipping, and in this history told here, minority positions are not exceptions. Furthermore, these positions are in constant movement in contemporary art. It means that the artistic concepts and productions are much more diversified and comprehensive than the space usually dedicated to them. Based on this thinking, the narrative choice that follows is, like all selection processes, previously sentenced to shortcoming. But if the artistic making can be seen as an activity in which “doubt” awaits at every corner and shortcomings are accepted, then, why shouldn’t a historic narrative of art be seen in the same way? Talking about shortcomings, therefore, is not only a melancholic doubt for the more radical, but also the acceptance of the existing possibilities in the gaps between intention and fulfillment. There is pleasure in shortcoming and also in its potential. Shortcomings open space for questioning about what truth would be in the field of art and, therefore, in a fictional history. This encyclopedia, developed in a historic circumstance, in which the construction of form is inevitably within this context, fiction becomes reality in these circumstances, and it helps to construct and define our understanding of history today. Anyway, what common historic, non-fictional and scientific practice reveals is that even tough fiction has its space; it should be regulated by documents, for extra-narrative reference, whether it is to reach reality or institute it, giving it purpose. And, purpose here is revealed at the moment in which the clipping presented can display a plural panoramic of contemporary art. Since the word ‘story’ (which, in Portuguese, means an account of something that is fictional, untrue, imaginary) was taken away from the Portuguese grammar the possibility to tell a history with half truths aroused, and without a doubt, almost all histories include some sort of lie, but not this one, I do promise. Based on the precept that the narrative chosen to be presented here is a historic construction and its purpose is to rethink the canonic topics of art history, this collection of artists tests the possibility of pondering about these histories, considering the different sources and a comprehensive research that goes beyond the great collections. The main hypothesis is that these documents offer other names, actors, problems, etc. Therefore, it admits other narratives and, with them, another art history. The task of choosing among an infinity of artists with an aim to construct encyclopedias implies endless actions. Unsolvable missions. Repeated tasks that are inevitably sentenced to shortcomings – more and more, over.

* Tainá Azeredo holds a degree in Communication and Body Arts, Curatorship and Art History, is a curator, researcher and manager of several projects. In 2009, she founded the Associação Casa Tomada, where she is a curator. This association is a space for art investigation in São Paulo.