Photos by Taylor Bishop
From artist-made stamps to drawings and images slapped on an envelope, mail art can send a profound message.
The Phoenix Art Museum is exploring this art form by hosting a national exhibit highlighting the decades of work of Brazilian artist Paulo Bruscky. The exhibit features 140 works of art made between 1971 and 2011. The mail art movement consists of anything that can be sent through the post. It is heavily rooted in Latin America and can be anything from a collage composed of recycled images to a painting.
Artists depended on physically mailing art to other artists, forming close relationships without ever meeting in person. Mail art is unique in that it allows the exchange of art, ideas and imagination without an intermediary such as an art gallery.
Bruscky was born in Recife, Brazil, and has lived there nearly his entire life. He drew inspiration from his daily life and societal ills, which he infused into an array of arts including mail art, performance art, poetry, photography, filmmaking and inventing.
Bruscky spoke at the museum in a panel discussion on Oct. 29 where a translator converted his words from Portuguese to English.
“Arte es vida,” or “art is life,” is Bruscky’s motto, which was stamped on almost all of his correspondences.
“Art and life are the same thing,” Bruscky said. “You cannot make a distinction between the two of them.”
He explained how he approaches art as a medical student approaches a corpse they are dissecting. Bruscky used his own body as unprocessed artistic material. From measuring his brain waves with hospital machinery to taking X-rays of his bones, this technical approach allowed Bruscky to allude to the frailty of human life under violent Brazilian regimes.
In conjunction with the exhibit and the artist panel, the International Mail Art Symposium took place at the Phoenix Art Museum in early October and included talks by scholars with a focus on the subject. Speakers included Mauricio Marcin, Mexico-based expert on mail art, and Vanessa Davidson, Latin American Art curator at the museum.
“I was really drawn to mail art because of this intersection between visual and verbal imagery,” Davidson said.
Marcin said he was instantly captivated by the art form because it is inherently anti-establishment.
“It’s contrary to the principles that rule our world,” Marcin said. “It goes against consumerism. Works are not done for a later selling, they are ruled by the gift economy.”
In 1980, Bruscky developed the illustrations of his brainwaves into a musical score — “a concert of electro-photographic music,” as the artist called it. Bruscky did performance pieces centered around interactions with Xerox machines, a popular subject among mail artists. In the finale of one of his works, he set the machine on fire. Davidson said Bruscky is the “the Jimi Hendrix of Xerox machines.”
Bruscky’s work has been relatively underexposed in the United States, but despite the lack of publicity, the art form is international. He said the entire mail art movement is about communication.
Along with the exploration into the human images, Bruscky also emphasized the political statements in his artwork. He said he is passionate about the rights and essentials to which humans are entitled.
“Every person should have access to the basic goods of life,” Bruscky said. “My work reflects this.”
During Brazil’s dictatorships, Bruscky was imprisoned and tortured. He said that upon his arrest, he told the police that they could take him because he would rather die than be censored. Censorship is the force that mail artists try to prevent, he said.
“The beautiful aspect of this movement was art without boundaries,” he said.
The exhibit, titled “Paulo Bruscky: Art is Our Last Hope”, will be at the Phoenix Art Museum until Nov. 23, and at MonOrchid from Dec. 5 to Jan. 12.
Contact the reporter at Aida.Chavez@asu.edu
