Brazil expo in The Hague barely bothered by turbulence in Brasilia

Impeachment proceedings, social unrest, corruption: recent reports on Brazil paint a not very optimistic picture. Yet this very country is at the centre of the major annual major sculpture exhibition in The Hague. The reason: the Olympic Games, later this year in Rio. But does the suspension of President Roussef make Brazil a risky cooperation partner for an exhibition?

Ultimate doomsday scenario is, of course, what happened to the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam in 2014. The Ukrainian museums that had loaned objects for the exhibition Crimea, Gold and Secrets of the Black Sea, had suddenly become Russian after the exhibition ended.

Beelden aan Zee is not afraid of such a scenario, says spokesperson Emma van Proosdij. 'Brazil is indeed anything but stable, content-wise the exhibition is also about that. On the other hand, I have to say that the people we work with, such as galleries and artists, continue to work as usual. We are more in the contemporary circuit and so we are not dealing with a state collection either.'

And so Lange Voorhout in The Hague was once again an artistic construction site this week (see photo report). The usually very large sculptures often had to be built on site. Sometimes by artists, sometimes on their instructions by a Dutch team. Alette Wttewaall, as project leader from Beelden aan Zee, guided the construction. Some works do not return to Brazil afterwards, she confides. They are so enormous that they have to be dismantled.

After many working days from seven o'clock in the morning until late in the evening, Wttewaall can look with satisfaction at the results: this year, a smaller number of sculptures, but of larger size. Artworks that shed light on the cult of the body in Brazil, nature, sports, corruption, the colonial past and the position of art; a mirror of the melting pot that Brazil is in many ways.

Still, Brasil, Beleza?! suffered from political instability for a while. That was when interim president Temer reversed the dissolution of the Culture Ministry after protests and made Marcelo Calero a minister. Calero was scheduled to open the exhibition in The Hague a few days after that, but was now unable to leave so easily and had to cancel after all.

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