Mira Schendel (1919-1988)

Galeria Millan, São Paulo
Private Collection, Houston

New York, The Museum of Modern Art,  April 5-June 15, 2009; Madrid, Museo Nacional Reina Sofía, November 24, 2009-March 1, 2010; Porto Alegre, Fundação Iberê Camargo, April 8-July 11, 2010, Tangled Alphabets: León Ferrari and Mira Schendel, no. 74, p. 116, illustrated in color
London, Tate Modern, Mira Schendel, September 25, 2013-January 19, 2014, no. 90, p. 244

Guy Brett, Kinetic Art: The Language of Movement, London, 1968, pp.46-7, discussed

This work is in very good condition considering its age. Minor, concentrated spots of discoloration are present. The overall structure is stable.
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Sometime in 1965-66, Schendel invited her young daughter, Ada, and some local children into her studio and asked them to "crumple and twist pieces" of the same semi-transparent rice paper she had used for her monotypes, to create a series of soft sculptures. Described by art historian Luis Pérez-Oramas as one of Schendel's "greatest bodies of paper works," Droguinhas [Little Nothings], are meant to "find complexity in the insignificant, [their] abyssal archaeology intimately concerned with writing, its mythic origins and essential rejections." (1)

By their very nature, Droguinhas resemble nothing. Three-dimensional, impenetrable and primordial, they neither connect nor separate matter. Existing simply as organic knots that can never be untied, they evoke the senseless knotting of language, the complications of context, and the ambiguous role of signs and symbols. As described by Guy Brett, "Schendel's Droguinhas do not describe any particular movement, but they are vital contributions to the language of movement, because their fragility and energy indicate space as an active thing, a field of possibility." (2)

(1) Luis Pérez-Oramas, "León Ferrari and Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets," León Ferrari and Mira Schendel: Tangled Alphabets, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2009, p. 31-32

(2) Guy Brett, Kinetic Art: The Language of Movement, London, 1968, p. 46