andressa cantergiani

Curatorial text

AMAZONA, or the dance of resistance

In Greek mythology, the Amazons were warrior women who, according to some legends, cut off their own breasts to better wield bows and arrows. This was a violent process aimed at ensuring their own safety, since the presence and location of their breasts would limit their movements, hindering their dexterity and precision in using these objects. In other words, self-mutilation as a defense strategy.

If we think about nudity throughout the history of art, representations of breasts permeate the imagination and common sense in the identification of different types of bodies. We find breasts as a symbol of the feminine condition, playing an important role in both sexuality and motherhood. From being the matrix of life to being associated with carnal sin, breasts have been seen as indicative of vanity and sensuality in contemporary times.

The work “Amazona, or the dance of resistance” (2022), which gives its title to this exhibition, is born from the myth of warrior women.

After an episode of physical violence suffered on public transport, Andressa Cantergiani began to think about her fragility and lack of reaction to the incident and, inevitably, to conjecture different outcomes if she had defended herself, if she had known how to defend herself. From this, the artist investigates different self-defense techniques, including karate, judo, kravmagá and kickboxing. Understanding the situation experienced not as an individual trauma, but as a common situation resulting from a structurally violent society, Cantergiani organizes a series of workshops to teach defense movements to socially vulnerable bodies.

At the same time, the artist is inviting donations of self-defense moves. Using motion caption technology, she captures and records these movements, which are later used in the choreography of the video “Amazona”. Featuring seven performers, seven different bodies, from different origins, the video – shown in the projection at the back of the exhibition room – transforms fighting moves into dance, giving fluidity to the movements and freedom to those bodies. From restriction and fear come strength and reaction.

As part of the research process that is part of this work, made possible by a Weltöffenes Berlin 2022 Fellowship and NPN/SttepingOut/Joint Adventures Fund 2022, carried out over the course of a year-long residency in the German city, we exhibit on the left side of the gallery two base videos of the donated motion captures and a video with various scenes from the process of developing the choreography, rehearsals and capturing images for the video, showing behind the scenes of the work's process. Also on display in the exhibition are two sets of boxing bags and gloves, available for visitors to handle, which will also be activated with self-defense workshops, with the presence of the specialized instructor and the artist.

The capture of the donated movements reverberates in the other set of works present in this exhibition: "A-Zone Cyborg” (2022/23), whose ramifications occupy the entire right side of the exhibition space.

“A-Zone Cyborg” dialogues with the “Cyborg Manifesto”, proposed by Donna Haraway in 1985. For this author, every cyborg would be a hybrid between a natural organism and a machine, a lived experience and fiction, with the boundary between both spheres being merely an optical illusion. Playing with this threshold, Cantergiani builds a parallel and dystopian digital universe in which various cyborg beings cohabit: avatars that exist in flux, in space and time, embodied and activated by the set of real self-defense movements collected by the artist. They assume archetypal characteristics, each of them having a specific role in this fictional universe. From Big Mother, or the “Great Mother” (2023), all the other avatars are created: “Cure”, “Street Fighter” and “Inverted Myth”. In the exhibition, they are displayed in 3D video performances, side by side, culminating in the video of the Great Mother, in which the fictional universe created by the artist can be better understood in its symbolism and visuality.

Thus, mirrored in the exhibition space, face to face, the encounter between the real and the virtual occurs, in Cantergiani's work and in the exhibition. The organic and fluid movements of the avatars are direct reflections of the bodies – living organisms – that fight against an infinite chroma key background. Cyborg hybrids that use dance as a defense strategy, but also as a means of self-affirmation in the world. A counterattack. A contradance in which multiple and fleeting identities flirt with the possibility of redistributing everyday violence, as Jota Mombaça warns us in “Strategic notes regarding the political uses of the concept of place of speech” (2017).

In the back, in the room on the right, we come across the avatar sculpture “Big Momma-Mona” (2024). Made of biodegradable PLA filament from 3D printing processes, the work consists of 17 different parts of the body of the Big Mother, on a real scale that emulates the body of the artist herself. Dismembered at the beginning of the exhibition, it is assembled by Cantergiani in a performance action during the opening, in which the collected movements play, once again, a central role. With the pieces joined together, the number of breasts that surround this body becomes evident, occupying a large part of the surface of the sculpture. Breasts that, instead of being mutilated in search of a safe way of being in the world, are abundant. Breasts that, resignified, come to symbolize resistance.

Bruna Fetter