top of page

Artist’s Roll/Role

2013

Action

Adhesive on four-roll package of toilet paper

In a context in which the artist and their art aren’t much valued, very few are the expositive spaces as traditional as museums and galleries that are available, and the artist has to be in a constant fight for recognition and for legitimating their practice, emerges this action that brings those topics to a spotlight, in a humored, light-hearted way without leaving the critical, deep meaning: what is, in fact, the role of an artist?

Paying attention to the poetry by Piero Manzoni and Cildo Meireles, Estêvão created an adhesive to be applied on top of original labels on toilet paper packs, with the overlapping of the writing “The role of an artist”, it restores a new meaning and gives a new view of this daily use product, making it part of his own speech and contributing for the questioning about the position of an artist in the current Brazilian society.

 

This action took part as a walk to a supermarket in Porto Alegre, where the artist himself stuck the adhesives to some toilet paper packs and left them on the shelves, for the customers of the shop to buy. Estêvão also bought some himself, and took them to his exhibit. The process was registered by the Photographer Giuliano Lucas and had the help of Michele Zgiet.

bottom of page