In this text, art critic Lisette Lagnado develops the concept “instauração” formulated by Tunga as a means to go beyond terms such as “instalação” and/or “performance,” which he deemed inapplicable. In Lagnado’s view, the word “instauração” captures “the fleetingness of events” in the artist’s work without becoming an aesthetic category in its own right; the term took hold as a result of international interest in the work of Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Tunga, and Cabelo. In this context, the word instaurar would refer to grasping a “spark of life” regardless of medium (painting or photography); applied to performance, the word implies the dislocation of the artist’s body as it moves toward alien bodies, the bodies of others. Lagnado analyzes “situações” created in the work of Tunga and of Laura Lima, where ritual combines with minimal movements. In a position informed by Arthur Omar, Lagnado asserts that what is at stake in artistic existence is displaced in “a passing step towards the material.” Temporality, she concludes, consists of “intensifying duration for as long as it lasts, no more.” 

This text by Lisette Lagnado attempts to define the concept of “instauração” in relation to artwork akin to installation in terms of spatiality. The term combines everyday space and a space that is in terms of time, similar to performance; without the direct participation of the artist, the work provides the viewer with a sensorial experience that goes beyond vision in the usual sense of the word. In developing this concept, Lagnado looks to works by Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Arthur Omar, Tunga, Cabelo, Laura Lima, and others. 

Lisette Lagnado (b. 1961) is an art critic, curator, and educator. Since the eighties, her work has engaged with recent contemporary art. She was instrumental to the Projeto Leonilson, undertaken shortly after the death of artist José Leonilson (1994) in order to put together a catalogue raisonné of his work so that it could circulate more widely. Lagnado curated the twenty-eighth São Paulo Biennial (2006).

For further reading, see the following texts by Lagnado: “La instauración, entre la instalación y la performance” (ICAA digital archive doc. no. 1111435), “A bienal desmontada” (doc. no. 1111321), and “Desejo de servir” [Serving desire] (doc. no. 1111262). See as well her interviews with Sheila Leirner (doc. no. 1111294), Thomas Cohn (doc. no. 1111322), Fernando Milan (doc. no. 1111293), and José Leonilson (doc. no. 1110768).