Liz Under (Araraquara, Brazil): SO WHAT?

Made with a LG K10 cell phone camera, vertically, in the usual instagram stories format. Its format refers to the ways in which the private became public with the advent of social networks – used for communication in the social isolation. Set in a bathroom, an extremely private space, the video exposes the artist Liz Under, with mask, touching frantically on a soap-liquid holder, releasing blood instead of soap, spreading it in a frustrated attempt to wash her hands, in growing despair. The performance happens in an isolated bathroom at the artist\’s house, used only when she returns from the streets: she takes a shower and then washes the bathroom with chlorine and water. “So what?” a popular expression that denotes indifference, sometimes contempt, gives title to this performance: a response to the necropolitics of the Bolsonaro’s government. Created after a press collective in April when a journalist asked him about the daily record of deaths from coronavirus in Brazil (474 deaths that day). The president answered: \”So what? What do you want me to do? My name is Messiah but I don\’t do miracles.\” While Bolsonaro says \”so what\”, thousands of people die, especially the minorities whom he publicly declares hatred: women, the poor, LGBTs, black people, original people and the working class. Thousands of people die in this health crisis, which has already killed 50.058 of people, leaving thousands of families desolated. There is blood on the hands of this government that washes its carefully, trying to not leave evidences.

BIO: Liz Under is a self-taught visual artist. Born in 1995 in Araraquara-SP, Brazil. She develops her research on power relations, focusing on the condition of women and also have references on the José Angelo Gaiarsa’s and Wilhelm Reich researches in body psychology. She transits between painting, printmaking, performance, photography and drawing. Irreverent, her work is often filled with acid humor with a hint of cruelty, but it is also visceral and very emotional. She has an interactive urban intervention project, the “Public Exhibition”, which is already in its 3rd edition, participating in: 1st Mostra MAR- Women, Activism and Realization (Cachoeira-BA, 2018), 2nd Arts and Urbanities Meeting (Salvador-BA, 2018) and the XVI Art Territory (Araraquara-SP, 2019). She attended the Lithography classes at the Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA) in Salvador-BA, in 2018. At the same year, she participated of the 5th International Print Biennial Lívio Abramo (Araraquara-SP). The works that were part of the show today are part of the collection of the Pinacoteca Mário Ybarra de Almeida. In 2019, she was part of exhibitions on the Lisbon’s Feminist Festival, in Portugal and at Transarte Gallery, in São Paulo, Capital. ARTIST’S WEBISTE