Brazilian artist Ricardo Coelho believes that the aesthetics of the body occupies a prominent place in today's world. And indeed, today’s celebrity culture, from tabloids to social media and the arts is deeply entrenched in the aesthetics of the body.

Both the aesthetics of the body and celebrity culture owe much to the classical roots of our Western Culture, and if we really think about it, there is little difference between what today’s celebrities stand for us and what Gods stood for people in Ancient Greece or Rome.

 

Coelho believes that we can no longer ignore the dynamic relationship that is established between the body of the work and the body of the observer at the moment of aesthetic fruition. The body as ‘space’ is always permeated by individual experiences in a constant, but not always conscious, dialogue with the other representations produced in the universe of culture.

What is or what can the body be? … this fragile and opaque wrapping that encloses the subject; the beginning and end of humanity itself…at this moment, the World seems without answers to this question. For those who are forcibly displaced and are left to deal with the mere maintenance of life, the right to freedom and symbolic exercise is suppressed; leaving them only to the recognition of their own fragility…

Ricardo Coelho holds a Post-Doctorate from the Unicamp in Brazil, a PhD in Visual Arts from the Institute of Arts at the Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) (2015), having conducted part of his research at the Universitat de Barcelona (2014), with a sandwich scholarship subsidized by CAPES; a
Master in Visual Arts from the Institute of Arts at Unesp (2003) and a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the
same institution (1999).

Since 2009, he is a professor at the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Applied Arts of the Federal University of São João del-Rei, in Minas Gerais. He also works as an independent curator,exhibition designer and, as a visual artist, has participated in more than 40 exhibitions of contemporary art and video festivals in spaces such as Casa das Rosas, Centro Cultural São Paulo, Funarte, Fundação Bienal, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, besides having participated in the 2nd Cultural Award Sérgio Mota and the VideoBrasil Festival.

 

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By Kalinca Costa Söderlund