Seeing Through Stone: Sonny Trujillo’s Voice from Within
Remy Francisco, October 25, 2024 At 63 years old, Sonny Trujillo stands upon a collapsed prison surveillance tower. He paces five steps...
Join us this April 12th for a performance by Explode! Platform, a Brazilian collective founded by Art Department’s Assistant Professor Cláudio Bueno and artist João Simões. This performance is free and open to the public and part of the Seeing through Stone exhibition’s opening celebration at the Institute of the Arts and Sciences, UC Santa Cruz.
The artists and ten collaborators will activate at the IAS’s library through a collective performance that amplifies Brazilian abolitionist thinking by bringing diverse perspectives on liberation and the carceral system to Santa Cruz. Part of Seeing through Stone, Passagem is an installation of books, paint, metal sheets, videos, and a public program series that makes visible global struggles around abolition through collective initiatives. During the event, performers will read aloud and simultaneously, passages from books in Portuguese linked to the broader debate on abolition in Brazil, creating a sonorous and bodily experience and exploring the limits of translation.
Founded by Cláudio Bueno and João Simões, Explode! Platform was formed in Brazil and operates at the intersections of art, pedagogy, and social justice.
Image: Detail, Explode! Platform (Cláudio Bueno and João Simões), Passagem (2024). The author of the sentence in the image is Denise Carrascosa, from the book “Abolicionismo. Feminismo. Agora.”
Cláudio Bueno is an artist and curator from São Paulo, Brazil, living in Santa Cruz, California, United States. He serves as an art professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC, Art Department). At this university, he teaches at the Environmental Art and Social Practice MFA and is an affiliated professor of Visualizing Abolition Studies. He has engaged in several collaborative practices committed to social and environmental justice, featuring in many international exhibitions, artistic residencies, awards, and talks. Bueno has published with Tainá Azeredo, Intervalo-Escola: The Artisanship of Times, Learnings, and Collectivities. In: Things we do together: the post-reader. Milan: Mousse Publishing and Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, 2020, and, with João Simões, in regards to the queer and female representations at Sao Paulo Bienal: […], In Bienal de São Paulo from 1951. (2022).
João Simões is an artist, curator, researcher, and designer. He develops, with Cláudio Bueno, the ‘Explode! Platform,’ a platform that fosters artistic and cultural practices with an emphasis on the intersections of class, race, gender, territory, and sexuality. Simões has featured in curatorial processes, public talks, and performances in several cultural institutions worldwide. They were part of the mentoring group of the LAW performance program sponsored by the Pro Helvetia Foundation. Their research is dedicated to queer and black studies in Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, and Latin America, in the context of literature and visual arts.
