CORPO PRESENTE by Felipe Avila

During the last 3 years, Felipe Avila (1981, Sao Paulo) has developed works in analog photography, researching the body and our relationship with the divine, the profane and nature in these urgent times of the present. Avila likes to think of his work of a mix between performance and photojournalism, and he is interested in exploring the intersections between photography and painting.

More recently, Avila started photographing riots against another increase in the public transportation fare. ” This time we were not as strong as in 2013 and the demonstrations, ignored by the media, emptied under ostensible police repression. Then the carnival came. I began to observe the force of suffocated bodies shouting for freedom, I had the feeling of living in a historical period going on. With the camera, I went to the street accompanying these bodies throughout the year. CORPO PRESENTE was born in the urgency of our times.” I believe, photography has the power to keep these manifestations alive beyond any repressive effort and I needed to find a way to tell this story. It was there that the idea of the photo book came up to give a body for the series of photographs. The revolution started and is not in the newspaper.”

” We can no longer justify our present state. We can no longer justify the small fears we create and, as a mantra, repeat ourselves at every second the uncertainties about our future. We can no longer let the cruelty of the share of the oppressive reality to dictate our stories and to silence us.

At the digital world, the unification of all tools runs side by side with the idea fragmentation. We all use the same gadgets, building the very same empire controlling us. Social media paralyze our bodies, keep people distant and offer a readable world through algorithms which fake a greater sense of unity at an age when the world spins at an inhumane speed.

When we unveil these fictions and overthrow the institutions once controlling us, we are able to look deeply to who we really are, matter through where we experience the world: the body. On it, we find the missing truth and reveal what has been repressed.

Every day, status-quo sets brightly itself indeterminate. To face it we shout. Black-blocks thought us that the institutionalized brutality against us is practiced daily. Our world cannot fit resignation anymore. We must hack the system.

It is necessary that we become monuments, and that the molds of our bodies are those that the stories will reverberate. To demand the impossible today is a resolution.

As a barricade or wave, let our bodies break down the barrier between genders, flooding the streets and the dream of our detractors. Let our inconvenience be present, and let the dissidence of our bodies be the key to building a new tomorrow. The place to be is here, and now.”

Contact:

www.avilafelipe.com
Instagram: @felipeavila