[KURA] 1. The Caixa de Pandora project invites contemporary artists to create new productions from an immersion in Ivani and Jorge Yunes Art Collection. The works presented started from a relationship with which works and/or objects? How can works from different contexts coexist in harmony in the same space?

[REBECCA SHARP] My work for Caixa de Pandora came from the family background that allowed this collection to form over decades of collecting. I also focused on the historical aspect of the silk routes that allowed art to be carried and brought from Asia to Europe and beyond. I sought, above all, references in Asian and African works because they represent a personal study that I developed as a technique and energy potential. Arts from different times can intensify the relationship between them and bring a new message. A great example is the painting by Jenna Gribbon at the Frick Collection in NY in 2022, which is composed mostly of paintings of men and about men - almost in the shadow of patriarchy. I found the acquisition of her work within that space the most powerful artistic act in a long time. Caixa de Pandora happens  in a similar way - it breaks, builds and reveals something new. Artists pull their messages and actions from different sides, as Willem De Kooning said when the NY School was criticized: "What do they think we’re a baseball team?" Art is not a team with a purpose, it is more pollen or fungal underground circuits, which create self-intelligent and forever diverse variety.
[TADÁSKÍA] I called my participation in the project “Abduction”, which includes a video, also titled that way, on six screens arranged in different rooms; fabric designs; the arrangement with fruits and, finally, the modification of the Império Room. In the video, a support that appears for the first time in an edition of Caixa de Pandora, some objects that make up the collection and some rooms of the mansion appear. The relationship created with the collection, through Abduction, always tends towards mystery: I don’t explicitly say why two black girls are seen only on two nights in the scenes made in that place; or why a spit hits the ground and turns into a drawing, reminding us of Sankofa commonly seen in windows in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro. We can trust, on the other hand, that even though the two girls in the video do not belong to that house and its collection, the sense of entry and exit of both is entirely summoned by a change that provides suspense in the harmony of the house.

[K] 2. How important is a project like Caixa de Pandora for promoting contemporary artistic production?

[RS] I see the strength of the Caixa de Pandora project in the differential of the exhibition space. Allowing people to visit the Yunes family's collection and home is an experience you don't have in Brazil. This project works at the intersection of museum, gallery and private art collections. Inserting contemporary artists from different social classes, cultures, colors, free genres and expression, encourages and strengthens the need for the 'new' in the form of freedom to live and express themselves with dignity. The future we live in from the point of view of the time of the works in the collection, would be absolutely alien and repressed with maximum consequences. Bringing these two timelines together, rigid past and free and responsible future together creates healing, wisdom coming in the form of an example and relief above all. Caixa de Pandora is like the 'Hadron collider' where particles from different times and realities experience a collision with each other and 'break' with the 'current' reality, creating another. I'm sure that all participants in the works of the collection, painters, sculptors, kings, queens and empires benefit from this throughout the ages.
[T] I believe that good incentives for artistic production are important and always welcome. Pandora's Box is an important window for artistic articulation, development and dissemination. When I was invited, being the first black and trans artist to date, I was very excited to create some composition, some temporary arrangement around the millenary objects. It is surreal to imagine so many centuries concentrated in one place. When I got to the Yunes collection I remembered a very fanciful phase of my childhood: me traveling through stories of witches, princesses and hauntings. I was a child believing that I could fly beyond the Santíssimo neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro.

[K] 3. What has been the most recent research object within your production? How can it be seen in the unpublished works exhibited in the seventh edition of the Caixa de Pandora project?

[RS] The research work was based on the first movements of works of art from Asia to Europe, which was made possible by the opening and construction of routes, of streets, of paths that acted as veins of connection between cultures bringing and taking food, animals, spices, art and people. The world opened up with the possibility of conversation and exchange between peoples. I brought the sea as a theme of separation and junction between cultures (African and Brazilian), and as a carrier of stories, crimes, beauty, power, suffering and the ability to hold this whole.
[T] I've been drawing since I was a kid and I've been making videos since I was 18. For Pandora's Box is the first time I draw with acrylic. And I call it drawing and not painting more because of a habit of drawing on various supports than any other situation, and what I've been doing can also be called a mixture between one thing and another. By the way, I've drawn on other occasions with nail polish, makeup in general (lipstick, blush, highlighter, eye pencil etc) and recently I made a mixture of oil paint, charcoal and olive oil on the wall of the Sé gallery. The color has interested me for some time, and the oil on the wall with olive oil brought a feeling of freshness, lingering in the environment. With the ten designs in the collection, on the other hand, I was craving color as well as a certain speed in drying. Experiencing the variation of the minutes as in the Abduction scenes which, alone, present different temporalities. They range from forty seconds to four minutes - this being the single longest scene. It's the first time I've directed a visual project alone with a team of six people, performing effects, soundtrack and editing. I had already made videos in many ways, and co-directed an experimental documentary in 2017. But situating beyond two screens as well as deciding the video (in its official exhibition) with sound only in the opening and final scene is also new. Moved by the gaps, in the transition between silence and music. Incidentally, it is also new to present an arrangement with bamboo and fruits that are renewed. Imagining the transformation between an arrangement whereby fruits disappear and appear alive; time-sensitive and never-rotting, in moments of unspecific abduction.