Barja Barreto Orelha Cabeça
Chacha Barja e Daniel Barreto
Nonada Gallery – Rio de Janeiro, 2024
text curator: Ariana Nuala
Chacha Barja, in turn, brings migration into his trajectory: from Belém, in Pará, he settled in Rio de Janeiro before making Recife his home. Along this path, his work became a site of articulation — a dwelling — between memories, territories, and the structures that later give shape to his sculptures.
Both Barreto and Barja share an interest in the ordinary — perhaps heads, ears, mouths — parts and gestures that evoke the abrupt everyday, full of stories that often emerge from street wanderings, parties, and prayers.
The encounter between Barja and Barreto goes beyond the daily instability or the contradiction of being in motion. Their works reflect a radical curiosity about life, a rare abundance in times of environmental collapse, crises, and conflict. Within them, there is a stubbornness in affirming what still pulses, in dismantling strategies of violence, and in cultivating the desire to create. In this unceasing flow of transformation, their works insist on mechanisms built from the vitality of being impressed by matter and by the state of things around them.
Their practices are not limited to local context but connect individual and collective experiences, proposing new ways of looking at the relationships between body, space, and community. This engagement translates into a commitment to thinking of art as a means of transformation and dialogue between the personal and the collective. These are arrangements that move from one point to another, reinventing what has been seen.
Their thoughts blend with everything around them, claiming their part in the whole. Alive.
Ariana Nuala
São Paulo,
December 2024
