Texto pela ocasião do Ciclo III da residência Pivô Pesquisa, São Paulo, 2022.

By Tiago Sant’ana

Felipe Rezende usually creates from drawings and paintings, using as his material the tarps of trucks, pieces of wheels and other objects thrifted through meanderings in urban spaces. By having worked in the mockup of the city of Salvador, in Bahia, and also as an assistant in civil construction, Rezende crosses over between these two different experiences to elaborate an imaginary about typical work scenes. Distancing himself from the idea mere ethnography, the artis invests into recreating people and gestures to develop a repertoire of scenes that induce us to imagine little processes of escape during work – questioning the sheer logic of the exploration and the machining of working life. Rezende’s works take us down route that make us think about what are the ghosts of the Brazilian worker, what does he dream about, and, above all, what are his delusions and strategies to “cook the rooster”*

*expression used to designate a less rhythmic form of labour, a type of turtle operation