Vertical Zen is a new work by artist Vanessa da Silva made in the Studios at Hospitalfield for the Summer Festival Open Weekend 2019. The work forms a cartography of symbols, garments and gestures, brought together to consider the feeling of being at ‘home’ or belonging in a place. Vanessa was born in São Paulo, Brazil; she lives and works in London.

Her process-based practice combines sculpture, textiles and performance, focussing on issues of formation of identity, migration and displacement.

 A conversation between Vanessa da Silva and Cicely Farrer, Curator & Programme Coordinator, Hospitalfield.

CF: In the Studio, you have created an installation with a structure reminiscent of a parasol repeated four times. Could you tell me about the decision to use the parasol? 

VdS:  Prior coming to Hospitafield I was in my hometown São Paulo on a residency. In São Paulo I was inspired by the way many street vendors in the city utilise parasols as roofs for their ambulant shops. The ‘parasol shops’ house commerce and exchange as well as being a site for people in the city to gather. In this context the parasols are linked with working class labour: a way for people to work and make money to live in a city where there is a stark wealth divide.

It was very important to have the mix of materials in the structure, the choice of PVC, steel and aluminium pipes came about by thinking of this DYI way of life, where you ‘construct’ your life with what you have available, like the vendors that create a job for themselves under their parasols. Each parasol is covered with textiles from different places in the world, so the interconnectedness of the structure was a way to translate this amalgamation of cultures through a network. I deconstructed garments that I collected from São Paulo and Arbroath to make patchworks; I wanted to have the presence of the body of each place in the work.

 CF: The textiles themselves are full of the shapes of clothing but also the symbols of drinks, school uniform and branding. When we first started talking, you were looking at traditional symbology. The symbols in ‘Vertical Zen’ are contemporary and linked to global nature of capitalism. How did you decide on the materials and the symbols?  

VdS: The installation is about people from different cultures, so it made sense to work with their garments, to bring this energy to the piece. I see them as shadows of 'bodies' from different places. I have been interested in symbology systems for a while and I started looking at uniforms as symbols. I worked with clothing that reference specific groups of people: the uniforms of state schools and football teams of São Paulo accompanied by tartan fabric from kilts and school uniforms bought from charity shops in Arbroath. Uniforms create unity, give a sense of belonging, but also differentiate, separate and divide. There is a double logic and meaning here. In the installation I choose to mix them together, resisting their geographic coherence. 

In terms of the logos I was interested to bring the element of consumerism to the space with the graphics of products that people from each place can recognise, and to create the reference to commerce, returning to the idea of the 'parasol shops'. I re-drew part of logos of specific products of different countries to be screen-printed in the textiles.

CF: Some of the symbols are really recognisable to me, but others less so. 

VdS: The idea of the local signifier interests me, when only people from specific regions, recognise symbols and logos found in the uniforms or can pinpoint a distinct logo of a soft drink - as the Irn Bru or Guaraná - but also thinking of local symbols, those that we see in a place and can make us think of, or feel at, home. The layering of fabrics and having the transparency element in the installation was important. The idea of seeing through each component, overlapping references, being able to see them separately but also in relation to each other. Seen together there is both a friction and an abstraction.

 CF: The utopian metaphor of ‘a world without borders’ came up a lot in the development of the work. How do you see this appearing in this piece? 

This is a reoccurring theme in my work. In my previous piece Stranger than Paradise (2017) I mixed the graphics of different national flags together. It was during the lead up to the Brexit referendum. I wanted to create a positive space, where nations were united and celebrated together. I think in Vertical Zen this metaphor exists through the ‘mash up’ of references stitched as a coming together of cultures with no hierarchy or separation, bringing into conversation a diversity of geographies. In this work it was important to highlight my Brazilian background but also to create a dialogue with the European context that I migrated to.

CF: How did you decide the title of the work?

VdS:  I was thinking of the horizontal and vertical angles within the structure of the installation. The parasols are horizontal with bars giving vertical support. The title also refers to the parasol as a ‘zen' symbol, but because my ideas for the work are linked with commerce in the hectic São Paulo, to me it becomes a type of 'vertical zen’. Again, it is like a paradox, where two meanings come together.