Sofia Caesar

Trajectory

Sofia Caesar has been developing research by engaging moving bodies, including her own. Inhabiting contradictions between leisure time and work time, she is looking for an escape within this binary. Through her performative work, she investigates the body’s resistance to the recuperation of pleasure and leisure within capitalist societies. Engaging in Caveat, the artist worked towards a solo exhibition, Canseira, which showcases Caesar’s practice from the past three years, bringing together works that deal with the historical ghosts that haunt the Centro de Arte Helio Oiticica building due to its connection to the oeuvre of artist Hélio Oiticica and the Brazilian avant-garde. Caesar addresses how utopian practices like Oiticica’s have been incorporated in what Caesar calls ‘western play aesthetics’. Infantile, unproductive, bored, tired, playful, passive, and heavy, are a few of the bodily states Caesar brings awareness to in her performances and participatory works.

During Publishing & Performing Relationships. Caveat at Bâtard Festival, Sofia Caesar activated a performative sculpture called Zero Hour. Zero Hour is a relational object inspired by the actual template of a 'zero hour' working contract, as the ones that exist in Brazil but also in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. This work is an opportunity to reflect on modes of contracting with the field of work at large and the problematics that arise from these situations.

http://sofiacaesar.net

Biography

Sofia Caesar makes videos, performances, sculptures, and installations. The body in motion is central to her work. She often engages herself and the public in seeing how the structures that act on us, such as architecture, language, or the camera, can be played with. In her works, we often see bodies escaping the forces that control them, creating a language of their own. In Caesar’s works, structures that surround her become scripts to be performed. An interview becomes a partition for a collective reading. An archival film is transformed into a trajectory on the floor. A work contract, a sign post that can be pointed at multiple directions. A surveillance system, a track for running. The sunset, a time to sit still. This exercise of creating choreographic scores with the world around her, allows Caesar to amplify moments of liberation. From structures that would otherwise be overpowering, Sofia finds dance and noise. She has participated in exhibitions such as 6th Moscow Biennial (RUS); Delirium & Destiny, A Tale of a Tub Rotterdam (NL); Transperformance 2, Oi Futuro (RJ, BR); EDP Award, Instituto Tomie Othake (Sao Paulo, BR), among others. She won the Rumos Itaú Cultural 2018 prize and her work “Worker leaves the factory (conditions for the work)” is part of the permanent collection of Parco d’Arte Vivente, Torino (IT). sofiacaesar.net