Beauty for Ashes Project – Brazil
Duda Penteado and the collective Thought Process
Is it possible to extract beauty from the ashes? For the artist Duda Penteado, the answer is positive. Born in São Paulo and settled in the New York metropolitan area, he begins to develop the Beauty for Ashes project after witnessing the overthrow of the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Duda proposes the interaction between different artistic languages: conceptual, video, installation, sculpture, interactive panel, performance, mural, lectures and other possibilities of actions involving the public.
The beginning happens with the creation of a painting that consists of a recreation of the Guernica of Picasso, now seen under the impact of the attack. The strong colors, the presence of the towers in the center of the work and the revisited images of the Spanish artist, such as the screaming faces, the stretched and erected boats and the climate of despair, predominate like mechanisms of expression.
What is most significant in this whole process, however, lies in the links that Penteado sees between art and education, seeking social inclusion through art, especially of young people and peripheral neighborhoods of big cities. In a globalized world as the contemporary, the frontiers are progressively diluting before the force of the enchantment of the plastic production, either by the passion for a subject or the repudiation to any type of violence.
Duda's objective in this project is to promote dialogue, and in the process of transformation from ashes into beauty is necessary to include meetings with university students to discuss common concerns. Perhaps the essential point is to cause an internal displacement of each individual against conformism.
Few feelings can be worse than a passive acceptance of the injustice of the world or the aggressiveness of the human being. Art, in this respect, has the rare ability to render what seems dead in life. There is magic power generated by the work and the ability to propose and execute projects.
Oscar D'Ambrosio Journalist & MFA - UNESP University, and member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA- Brazil Section).
