I used to be a dancer
Cristiana Tejo
Legend goes that the American anarchist writer Emam Goldman challenged the canon of the anarchist cause with her joy in dancing freely at balls, because to the eyes of her comrades-in-arms (men) it was not suitable for an agitator to dance. “I want freedom, the right to express myself, everybody’s right to beautiful and radiant things”, wrote Emma in her autobiography “Living my life” (1931). The phrase “If I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution” sums up her battle for the right to live her ideal of fight and became a kind of feminist motto. But we could extend this maxim also to the confront of Eurocentrism. In the Western world there is some distrust in relation to the peoples that articulate dance in different instances of daily life, because life here is organized in another way.
The joy, rhythm, spontaneity of movement and bodily interaction are considered frivolity, lack of seriousness, exacerbated sexuality since under the European perspective mind (reason) and body (feelings) should be detached. The separation between body (culture) and nature is another binomial that structures the western thinking. Coming from the other side of the Atlantic, we are here to challenge all this.
I Used to be a Dance is Veridiana Leite’s manifest exhibition. The title may lead people to expect the explicit presence of dance in her paintings or even the performance of her first solo show at the NowHere space. This evocation exists to highlight the centrality of her dancing body in the pictorial process and the interlacing of life and art (yes, the artist has studied different kinds of dances since her childhood). Her imagistic vocabulary is based on her experiences, that is, on the landscapes visited, landing places, on the moments lived, on the objects and beings found along the way. It’s migrant, fragmented, in-motion painting that narrates facts, paths and the movements of the artist’s body in the world, even if codified, besides referring to the fusion between human and non-human existence. The start point of this exhibition is the circle painted at the center of the background wall, a sun made from the measures of Veridiana’s body, in repeated circular gestures, as in a choreography. As it is known, the sun is the most spheric object in the galaxy and is the main source of life of the planet Earth, being adored by innumerous civilizations that have dedicated or dedicate rituals to it. Fractal, paintings, drawings and lines orbit around the sun/body creating an immersive installation, an offering from the artist to the universe. The solar radiation spreads through the gallery in waves of color and narrative triggers, transforming itself. There are always elements that communicate and spread throughout her work.
Solar is a word that has multiple connotations and that can define this apparently diverse group of works: for the energy and luminosity or for the expansiveness and rejoicing in the shapes, patterns and colors, or even for the resemblance to the word solo (the art of executing a solo in music, the highlight of a composition). Martha Graham said that we never dance alone (there is always at least one absent partner) and we may observe, therefore, that the solo performed by Veridiana Leite has as dance partners many beings, happenings, images, rhythms and entities. She never stopped dancing. It will be a dancing revolution or it won’t happen at all.