Janaina Mello Landini – Aglomeração
Take a rope and start weaving it. De-dividing and unbundling its components, over and over again, until you succeed in subdividing its unit into units. Continue by freeing these thousands of imprisoned yarns from their twists. Remove it from its weight and mass. In the end, what do you have left? A thread: an indivisible unit. It is through this deconstruction that Brazilian artist Janaina Mello Landini is looking for a way to connect the threads of the nylon, dipado or cotton strings she decouples. Since 2010, this logic has been at the heart of his Ciclotrama series. A word she invented and which could be defined as follows: a succession of cycles (cyclo), wefts (trama) of threads unfolding in a continuous circle (Ciclotrama 121). The evolution of his work attests to the complexity of a technique in perpetual renewal, putting aside the apparent ease of this process. As proof, the new series of works named in Portuguese Aglomerações (agglomerations) that the artist presents until November 14 in Paris on the occasion of his second solo exhibition at the Galerie Virginie Louvet.
The strings she uses do not weave in space but on a canvas. For this architect by training, an understanding of space is a material condition that guides the realization of her work in stages. A preliminary design defines the moment of the performance it schedules, but does not exclude the chance of a potential accident, the breakage of a wire. Whether it is a three-dimensional architectural space or a linen canvas or two-dimensional boat sail, Janaina Mello Landini’s work expresses the same tension: the fusion of space and time. The artist likes to think and anticipate what his gesture can do to make happen again; everything must follow a logic. Explicit reference to his studies in mathematics and physics. The support of the canvas is therefore the receptacle of an overlay of yarn levels whose general appearance creates a mirror effect of its own system. This intertwining of torsions creates a path along the surface, which is the result of a structure of complementary force units. The reading of this trace recomposes the hierarchical framework of this perfect balance that allows the interaction between each yarn (Ciclotrama 129).
From this aggregate of threads no form is really sought by the artist. The final performance gives free rein to our own interpretation. Our perception is thus free from any search for meaning. Natural forms, trees, human organs… the vision of the organization of these threads is transcended by a single and same dynamic: the interconnection of the movement of fluids (Ciclotrama 123). And it is precisely these organic and natural fluids that form the reflexive foundation of Janaina Mello Landini’s work. In this hand-to-hand combat with the wire, she models her movement to realize that the transmission of flows is similar to any system. Like a palindrome, her work oscillates between two entities, one entropic – deterioration of a system – and the other synthetic – converging action of different factors; it reflects the universal organization of the world, which according to the artist results from their relationship.
From the centre to the periphery, from the minimum to the maximum, it is finally the interdependence between the individual and the collective that Janaina Mello Landini brings together in her works.
Diane Der Markarian
Featured image : Janaina Mello Landini, Ciclotrama 129 (détail), 2018, corde en nylon brodée sur voile de bateau, et cleat en acier inoxydable, 135 x 135 cm. Crédit : Émilie Mathé Nicolas, © Galerie Virginie Louvet, Paris.
Currently, an in situ installation of the Ciclotrama series is visible at the Carmignac Foundation on the island of Porquerolles, France.
