“Sergio & Simone”, a film by Virginia de Medeiros

Wednesday August 6, 2014
8pm – Free and open to the public
BGSQD (Bureau of General Services-Queer Division)
83A Hester street
New York, NY 10002

The work of Virginia de Medeiros centers on documentary strategies, as a means to transgress mainstream accounts and to question the boundaries between reality and fiction. The artist deals with three themes within the field of art and documentary: dislocation, participation, and fabulation. Adapting documentary images and lived accounts, she employs the latter for subjective and conceptual use to revision the representation of reality and alterity. De Medeiros works primarily with video and audiovisual installations, always seeking to converge the language of art and media and expand the aesthetic and technological possibilities to engender new modes of expression.

The film “Sérgio e Simone” (2009/2014), a work selected for the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014) and recipient of the ICCo residency award at the 18th Festival de Arte Contemporânea Videobrasil, documents the life of Simone, a transvestite who lived at the Ladeira da Montanha, in Salvador, capital of Bahia. Like most the residents of the borough, Simone was an avid drug user. However, after a crack overdose, she suffers a mystical delirium causing her to “find God” and circumvent death. From this episode onwards Simone abandons her identity as a transvestite, retakes her baptism name of Sérgio and becomes an avid evangelical preacher in a delirious quest to save humanity.

We are grateful to the Icco (Institute for Contemporary Culture) in partnership with the 18th Videobrasil Festival for supporting Medeiros’s residency at RU.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Virginia de Medeiros was born in 1973 in Feira de Santana, Bahia. She lives and works in São Paulo. In 2006 “Studio Butterfly” was selected for the Programa Rumos Itaú Cultural, and, that same year, was selected for the 27th São Paulo Biennial. In 2009, she participated of the residency program “ International Women for Peace Conference” in Dili, East Timor and, in 2007, of the residency at Centro de Artes La Chambre Blanche, in Quebec, Canada. Recipient of the award Rede Nacional Funarte Artes Visuais in 2009, with the video “Fala dos Confins” which was later acquired, in 2013, by the Centro Cultural São Paulo. In 2010, she participated of the 2a Trienal de Luanda “Geografias Emocionais, Arte e Afectos” and, in 2011, of the 32o Panorama da Arte Brasileira at MAM, in São Paulo. She was the recipient of the Rede Nacional Funarte Visuais award (2009) with “Jardim das Torturas” and the Prêmio de de Residência ICCo (Instituto de Cultura Contemporânea) residency award at Residency Unlimited in New York, USA. Recent solo shows include: Cães Sem Plumas (Museu de Arte Aloísio Magalhães – MAMAM, Recife, Brazil, 2014); Missão (Centro Cultural São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil, 2014); Cães Sem Plumas (prólogo) (Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil, 2013); Projeto Novas Aquisições MAC CE- Dos percursos e das poesias (Dragão do Mar, Fortaleza, Brazil, 2013); Coletiva Instituto Cervantes (Instituto Cervantes, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012); Metrô de Superfície (Paço das Artes, São Paulo, Brazil, 2012); e Vídeo Guerrilha (Intervenção Urbana Augusta, São Paulo, Brazil, 2011).

The artist is represented gallery: Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

BGSQD (Bureau of General Services-Queer Division)
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is a queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space hosted by Cage on the Lower East Side of New York City. We aim to foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community by offering books, publications, and art and by hosting readings, performances, film screenings, book discussion groups, and workshops. We provide local and visiting queers and friends with an open and inclusive space for dialogue and socializing. The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division welcomes you.

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