muq
museum of what we have left : Grief (2021)
Curatorial Project
museum studies, psychoanalysis
The first muq - museum of what we have left project, aimed to create an experience of collective elaboration of mourning through a virtual exhibition, presenting remains and traces of individual mourning processes in free association. In the Museum, fragments of the mourning process were gathered, to create a collection in constant growth and transition until its closing date.
The museum here is also a tool, which positions mourning as a device for the recognition of transience based on psychoanalysis, unfolding also in material devices of memory: a vivid memory, an old photo, a commemorative video, or a story in resonance in the mind. Art as an act of resistance historically also engenders mourning, translating pain and loss into color, image and sensation. In this sense, by remembering and interpreting the traces of what remains, art also celebrates the transitory of and in life itself.
The work consisted of engaging the audience as ‘participators’, as in Helio Oiticica’s concept, in which the public gains agency over the work. Participadors shared fragments of something that has gone for them. They submitted photos, video, music, and text, which were later archived and constituted a collective digital exhibition.
The exhibition design was a materialization of the ‘free association’ concept in which audiovisual and text are stitched together in a vertical linear layout website and social network’s timeline. Over six months of functioning, the Museum received numerous contributions from all over the country, processed and organized in an open and unrestricted curatorship - all the material sent was exhibited, except for ethical or copyright issues.
For archival matters, the contributions were organized in three axes. ‘What remains’ concentrates on memories, objects, and permanences of everyday life, understanding loss as a fragmentary category. In ‘Transitory Resistances’, we traced texts that turned a loss into words or linguistic affection. At last, in ‘Displacements’, we proposed looking at works that elaborate loss, understanding the work of art as a process of mourning, of libidinal displacement, in psychoanalytical terms.
Team
Lucas de Mello Reitz, co-director
Gustavo da Silva Machado, co-director
Luís Eduardo Candeia, Assistant
Ana Paula de Godoy Giménez, Designer
Leonardo Schreiber Schneider, Assistant
Isabela Brasil, Communications
Luís Eduardo Candeia, Assistant
Ana Paula de Godoy Giménez, Designer
Leonardo Schreiber Schneider, Assistant
Isabela Brasil, Communications
