By imagining a land without borders that all beings can walk and enjoy, is how Osaka’s Brazilian Pavilion materializes. Inspired by Yvyrupa’s concept of Guarani indigenous cosmology, which has no limits to the routes, the Pavilion brings the poetics of walking, structuring its routes in islands, part of a continental archipelago.
When the visitor arrives, he is faced with a large collective house, a large wave that houses the main exhibition space, and a large meeting space like those that are centrally located in the Yanomami collective houses. The triple ceiling height is not initially revealed; there is a screen that protects the main façade from the weather, the sun, and the wind: a large golden plane of “vinilona”, a Brazilian road transport trademark registered by Japanese immigrants. Bow the head in a slight reverence as you are led under the raft, where, next to the stage of the Brazilian coast, the light from projectors erupts upwards, translating the movements into the image of shoals of fish, through interactive art, that swim under the suspended plane of the raft, responsively as the movement.
At the back of the main space, you can see an “Oca”, an ancestral hut that proposes a rescue of the ancestry of native Brazilian and Japanese peoples. The formal composition comes from a cultural parallelism of the original “Ainu” and “Kaingangue’s” huts, who first built the roof and then lifted it in a collective process. This jute-woven cover is equipped with small lights that turn on the motion sensor, forming ephemeral constellations of light.
After going around the “Oca”, you access the most permanent space, the raft, which floats on the sound waves, that reverberate in the vibration of the suspended water, reflecting undulating lights and shadows inside the upper vaulted roof. It can be blown by two winds: the one that took us here, the golden sail of “vinilona”, the treasure that boosted domestic transport; and another represented by the air balloon, an atmosphere that we must take care of, and that tells us that the future is ancestral. Its positioning provides spaces for exchanges and typically Brazilian cultural presentations, indigenous dances such as “Tangará” and “Xondaro”, Afro-Brazilian games such as “capoeira” circles that combine fighting, dancing, and songs, as well as making it possible to see the maritime will-o’-the-wisp “João Galafuz”, Pernambuco myth that symbolizes the omen of storms and shipwrecks.
The large wave is complemented by a prismatic bar, a wooden palisade that rises like the aerial roots of a mangrove, that accommodates the vertical circulation with the support programs, which creates visuals of contemplation of the exhibition areas from the workstations. The addition of this bar of contemporary architectural features refers to the necessary diplomacy between cultures, in reference to Critical Regionalism, by incorporating the most interesting technologies of today combined with inspirations from ancestral architecture.
The topography accommodates sinuous water mirrors, referenced in the works of Lina Bo Bardi and Tomie Ohtake, and from it, neither soil is taken nor added, it is only molded, as if with the tips of the fingers. Large-size replicas of “Bichos” (1965) by Lygia Clark rest on this ground and display themselves, willing to change shape and personality in the interaction with visitors.
