" Diário de Cheiros: Affectio (Diary of Smells: Affectio), an exhibition conceived by Josely Carvalho for the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes re-routes a series of elements that find a laborious synthesis in space and in the moment of their realization. Thought of as the latest step in the new format of the Ver e Sentir (See and Feel) project, an institutional activity dedicated to reflecting on questions of accessibility and producing content and experiences that mirror this study, the exhibition gives continuity to the expectation of reaching a syntony of intellectual access for the visitor, as well as provoking little-explored zones of aesthetic and sensorial experimentation. This process takes place in the contact with works that solicit the activation of other senses apart from sight, where blind and sighted individuals have the opportunity to enjoy art and its provocations with the same intensity. To this end, our intention is that each stage of the project will have an external collaborator, especially contemporary artists. 

[...] The exhibition that now gains form expands through the museum’s spaces and demands attention from the visitor. But not that visual attention to which we are accustomed when looking at a painting, which minimizes the other senses and suspends present time. It is a corporal attention, sensual, which solicits the (un)conscious surrender of the visitor. Through their perceptions and movements through the spaces, they can create an attentive, affective space, activating recognition, a feeling of estrangement and memory. Part of the project Diário de Cheiros (Diary of Smells), the exhibition repossesses the reflection on resilience, the capacity to face and transform experiences of adversity, which has a psychological, but also social, character. In her work, resilience does not possess a defined face. Believing in its construction, and reflecting on recent events in our history, such as the demonstrations that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2013, this resilience will find its representation in the reunion of smells developed by the artist: Anoxia, Pepper, Dust, Barricade, Lacrimae and Queen of the Night. The installation, in the main space, and the artworks spread through the museum, function in conjunction, activating different readings of these spaces and the artworks that are found in them. [...]"  

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Daniel Baretto, curator
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Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (May 17th, 2019 - Sep 29th, 2019).

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Photo credit: Pat Kilgore