Exhibition “Jardim Mineral” Celebrates 50 Years of Diplomatic Relations Between Brazil and the United Arab Emirates.
After its success with the public and critics in Belo Horizonte, the exhibition “Jardim Mineral” by the Minas Gerais-born visual artist Ana Elisa Murta is set to open in the Middle East. The exhibition opens on December 19, 2024, at the renowned Bassam Freiha Art Foundation in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The event will run until February 16, 2025.
With the institutional support of Itamaraty (Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), the “Jardim Mineral” exhibition celebrates 50 years of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the UAE and is part of a series of actions planned to commemorate the anniversary.
The exhibition aims to showcase artwork made using paints created from rock waste. This unique approach not only gives new life to waste materials but also creates new alternatives for their use in society.
Through art as the main medium, the exhibition seeks to convey the message about the importance of environmental sustainability, offering an economic, sustainable, and non-toxic solution for the production of paints, through the treatment of mineral waste. In other words, art can inspire and provoke significant changes in our world.
Concept: Ana Elisa Murta’s “Jardim Mineral” establishes a connection between two geographically distant yet fundamentally linked landscapes: the mineral-rich mountains of Minas Gerais in Brazil and the vast dunes of the Rub al Khali desert in the UAE. Although distinct, both landscapes share a mineral composition and seek sustainable and healthy initiatives for paint production.
In an innovative artistic gesture, Ana Elisa Murta uses mineral waste to create pigments that bring her works to life through non-toxic mineral paints. By transforming discarded materials into art, the artist redefines these waste products and raises awareness about the importance of sustainability.
The exhibition goes beyond mere visual presentation, incorporating circular economy practices that reflect the symbiotic intersection between art and the environment.
Finally, the exhibition creates a cultural dialogue that transcends borders and invites reflection on how extractive activities can generate more value for society, proposing new forms of action in favor of environmental preservation and health. Through this, Ana Elisa Murta reaffirms the transformative role of contemporary art, which not only crosses cultural and geographical boundaries but also adapts and responds to the issues of our time.
“Bringing the ‘Jardim Mineral’ exhibition to the UAE fills me with pride as an artist and as a Brazilian. This is an opportunity to show the world the importance of choosing products that do not harm the environment or our health directly. In this way, the recycling of raw materials generates numerous positive impacts for society, showing that minerals can be redefined, bringing even more value to everyone involved in the process,” explains Ana Elisa.
Worldwide: The artist’s works have already been exhibited at the Sala Brasil, the Brazilian embassy in London, England, in 2023, where she showcased her works internationally in the “Colour Diving” exhibition.
In “Jardim Mineral: The Reverse of the Earth,” which was on display until May 5 of this year at the Museu Mineiro, the space was divided in half by two large hanging installations at the center, nearly 10 meters long, created stretched out on the floor, bringing microscopic mineral worlds in fragments.
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