Tonico Lemos Auad
Brazilian, 1968-

Sleep Walkers, 2009
Brazilian and Belgian lace and electric parts, 17 individual hand-sewn lanterns
Variable dimensions

The Collection of John and Amy Phelan

COMMENTS

Tonico Lemos Auad is a London based, Brazillian born artist, whose work embodies “a delight in blurring the boundaries between the natural and the fabricated, the living and the inanimate … Within common and insignificant contexts the artist carries out silent displacements that potentize the latent symbolic value of shapes and elements that normally go by unperceived, making them precious and permanent. These operations invariably involve a specific handicraft skill that is characteristic of certain regions or cultures and associated to traditional materials and techniques passed from one generation to the next down through the centuries. In their obsolescence in relation to the society of mass production, many of these techniques are currently nearly extinct, thus also turning Auad’s work into an extensive research and negotiation with each artisan involved.”

Sleep Walkers, on view at SBMA, was shown for the first time at MuHKA, in Antwerp, Belgium in 2009–10. These objects are produced using laces, which the artist acquires ready made of different origins that are transformed into three-dimensional objects in the form of organic shapes. The process requires precision and care, as a Portuguese lace, for example, with its coarser weave is cut and mended together, thread by thread, with an elegant piece of English lace, or Brazilian lace, in such a way that the transition from the one to the other is nearly imperceptible. Careful observation shows perceptible nuances in the passage from one weave to the next, revealing the small but significant differences that evidence not only the passage of a given know-how through the different cultures, but also the adaptations that this technique undergoes in each country over the years. These fruits and vegetables made of lace are hung like light fixtures from the ceiling and lit up from the inside, allowing us to observe all of the details on their surfaces. “Characterized by the imprecision of manual production, however, they present an organic aspect, seeming to sprout from the ceiling like exotic plants that result from the uncommon crossing between tropical and European seeds.”

- Pablo Leon de la Barra, " Bienal Naifs do Brasil, Alem da Vanguarda (Beyond the Avant Gardes) curated by Kiki Mazzucchelli, Centre for the Aesthetic Revolution, Web, 19 September 2012


SBMA CURATORIAL LABELS

BORN 1968, BELÉM, BRAZIL
LIVES AND WORKS IN LONDON

Tonico Lemos Auad is interested in the transformative properties of art-making. His works are assembled by hand from an eclectic assortment of materials ranging from grape stems to carpet lint. They also explore aspects of temporality—from the day’s work required in hand-making a small patch of lace to the ephemerality of portraits pin-pricked into the peel of a banana that blacken over time.

Sleep Walkers is an installation of hanging lanterns constructed from intricate pieces of Belgian and Brazilian lace. Their shapes are modeled after the balloon-like pillow on which a lace maker works as well as various fruits and vegetables. The title of the work derives from the artist’s experience of living with a sleepwalker and witnessing someone in a state of semi-awareness. The dangling, head-sized forms seem to be embodied with a ghostly aura that glows from within.

Labour and Wait, 2013