Dudu Quintanilha's Prophetic Complaints Explores the Act of Being in Public @ PSM
Dudu Quintanilha’s exhibition, Prophetic Complaints, features mostly videos that debate the (im-)possibilities of living together, generating belonging, recognition and social responsibility through research on verbal complaints. At PSM, Quintanilha reformulates the exhibition, adapting it to the gallery's exhibition space through performative collaborations with members of the Blaumeier-Atelier from Bremen, a project that since 1986 has been developing art projects with neurodivergent people in diverse fields such as theater, music, painting, photography, and literature. In addition, he invited the group MEXA from São Paulo – of which Quintanilha is a founding member — to occupy the gallery's "Loggia" and set up their own exhibition, 69 Rooms H&V.
The need to acknowledge the humanhood of marginalized individuals is very prominent in Quintanilha’s work with MEXA. The transdisciplinary art group is composed of people from various minority social groups which in Brazil are under permanent threat. The group embraces mainly transgender, gay, and Black people, whose elaborate performances and theater plays highlight their marginalized social condition in Brazil as a means of opposing discrimination and systemic violence. In the exhibition 69 Rooms H&V, MEXA is showing text-based works produced since the group was created in 2015 after violent events occurred in shelters for vulnerable people in São Paulo.
Prophetic Complaints and 69 Rooms H&V are on view through September 2nd at PSM, Schöneberger Ufer 61, 10785 Berlin.