CASACOR SP 2024: Alexandre Salles' installation graces the cover of Veja SP

It's the cover: the artistic installation "Ocupação Terreiro", designed by architect and designer Alexandre Salles , who heads Estúdio Tarimba, was chosen to illustrate the cover of Veja SP magazine in this week's edition, which features CASACOR São Paulo . With the title "Inspiring spaces", the publication summarizes the choice in a simple way: the installation summarizes the 37th edition of the show , which is based on ancestry, technology and sustainability. CASACOR São Paulo is just around the corner: with its debut scheduled for next Tuesday, May 21, the exhibition will host a preview for the press and invited guests only this Saturday (18). Housed in Conjunto Nacional, in the heart of Avenida Paulista, CASACOR SP this year has the theme " De presente, o agora" (From the present, the now ) – whose manifesto, prepared by the president of CASACOR's board of trustees, Livia Pedreira , provokes the question: "what ancestor do we want to be?".

Origin of the idea

At the intersection of Avenida Paulista and Rua Augusta, while visiting the area of Conjunto Nacional designated for his artistic installation, Alexandre Salles feels his entire body vibrate. Later that night, the architect and master in Urban Semiotics from the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of São Paulo (FAU-USP) dreams of an old black woman working with soil and plants. As soon as he wakes up, he understands the focus of his project at CASACOR São Paulo 2024 : the terreiro and its symbologies . Months earlier, Salles had spoken with Livia Pedreira, president of CASACOR’s board of trustees, about the legacy of the exhibition. The coordinator of interior design and furniture courses at the Istituto Europeo di Design São Paulo (IED-SP) has collaborated with the event since 2017, always reflecting on its educational dimension . “ What is it like to think about a commercial environment today in a fleeting time? There are many layers,” he ponders, defending the importance of connecting the educational aspect to ancestry. The theme of this edition encompasses the life and research of the creative, who calls himself a wanderer. “For me, wandering is creating points of reflection, inflection, communication , other ways of understanding our orality and its traces,” he says. For this reason, Salles created a microcosm of the terreiro , understood as ground, backyard, fertile land and ancestral axé, where it is possible to walk and be affected by the art and design objects gathered in his black curation, imagined with his colleague Lucas de Oliveira Freitas . The result? A celebration of contemporary black intellectuality .

The duo proposes a route divided into blocks that trace a reinterpretation of some aspect of this worshipped place: Origin – fertile, sacred and beaten land; Place-Time – backyard of the soul, of coexistence, spirituality, celebration of life and memory; Re-Existence – deep ties, living culture, ancestral wisdom, resistance and resilience, reconstruction of identity. The personalities honored range from Clementina de Jesus (1901-1987) to Cartola (1908-1980), from Heitor dos Prazeres (1898-1966) to Ayrson Heráclito, and even Salles's own grandfather, whose photo-painting welcomes visitors at the entrance. Based on earth and clay, the 156 ^m2 area focuses on natural materials (earthen coverings, ceramics, vegetation) and ancestral techniques (rammed earth, bamboo, wood, minerals, fabrics), and was conceived from the outset as a meeting place and place for exchanges .

The "Terreiro Occupation"

A circular structure, covered with flags reminiscent of Umbanda and Candomblé temples , invites visitors to linger and participate in conversations, activations with artists and moments of connection, such as stepping on the dirt floor, playing capoeira and doing batucada – after all, another great reference is the backyard of Tia Ciata, an influential figure in the emergence of samba in Rio. There are also designers, such as Daniel Jorge from Minas Gerais, creator of the Tourinho chair, the Panamanian-Brazilian Michele Wharton, whose brand values the tradition of indigenous women from the Guna Yala region, and Sérgio Matos from Mato Grosso, creator of the armchair Bodocongó. The works include everything from Candomblé objects to contemporary pieces by artists such as Moisés Patrício, André Ricardo, Diambe and Soberana Ziza, who developed the work Matriarca especially for the occasion, reinforcing the importance of women and feminine energy for an ancestral future. At the end, a blue room houses creations by Emerson Rocha and Luiz Moreira, as well as an immersive Afrofuturist experience . Life-size Orixás designed by Salles with artificial intelligence interact with the audience: “These entities exist, and they are you, because behind this wall there is a mirror.” The Sankofa , a mythical bird that looks back (past) while flying (present), with an egg in its beak (future), translates the “pororoca of narratives” tasked with building multitemporal bridges. The vestiges revered by them reverberate today towards an ethical, communal and spiritualized tomorrow. An ancestral tomorrow .