Lygia Clark
O Mundo de Lygia Clark

Lygia Clark’s (*1920 †1988, Brazil) artistic trajectory began with an emphasis on visuality. From 1947 to the mid-1960s, she successively produced drawings, paintings and sculptures. Since her creation of "Caminhando" (Walking) in 1963, however, Clark’s work gradually shifted towards the investigation of corporeality and always involved the creation of interactive objects. This shift in artistic themes, materials and modes of operation happened simultaneously on four levels: through the progressive destabilisation of the art object, the systematic transformation of the spectator into an active creator, the dissipation of the traditional notion of author, and the gradual abandonment of the artistic milieu and its modes of production and consumption. Clark’s last proposal — a psychophysical therapy entitled "The structuring of the self" (1976-88) — was the culmination of a poetic and ethic move aimed at dismantling rigid separations between object and body, spectatorship and authorship, aesthetics and healing, art and not-art. If the military dictatorship ruling Brazil (1964-1985) during most of Clark’s career tortured and constrained, her works structured, healed and expanded ways and possibilities for art and for people.

O Mundo de Lygia Clark (The World of Lygia Clark) is a documentary about Lygia Clark’s ideas, propositions and sensory objects. It mixes testimonies with images of several of her psychophysical experiments.

Director: Eduardo Clark

Courtesy The Associação Cultural “O Mundo de Lygia Clark”

Document media
Film, b&w, sound, 27:00 min

Issue date
1973

Tags
body object relation, desire, extended body, ritual, skin, therapy, touch