Ephemeral Desires: body-archive in movement
curated by danniel tostes
Largo das Artes
Rua Luís de Camões 2, Rio de Janeiro
Desire is a force that moves the body, traverses time, and challenges the boundaries of space. For Jean, the body is both a territory of freedom and a site of social limitation. His work seeks to capture the point of friction between the body’s longing for emancipation and the structures that shape it. What do we truly desire? How does the body, as an archive of experiences and memories, relate to desire? And in what ways can it be understood as a space of liberation?
In dialogue with Donna Haraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, in which she writes, “The cyborg body lacks the purity of myth and nature. It is hybrid, composed of elements not limited to the human or biological, but in conversation with machines and technologies”, Fahy also proposes a body that transcends the boundaries of traditional identity. Carrying personal memories and desires, this body reinvents itself through its connection to nature and through multiple layers of materiality, expressed in his drawings and tapestries created over the last four years between Brazil and Switzerland.
The technique of tapestry gains new meaning in Fahy’s practice, where imagined landscapes emerge from timeless encounters. In the work São Sebastião at the Beach, for example, the artist fuses the image of a friend with that of Greek painter Yannis Tsarouchis, renowned in the last century for portraying bodies from the LGBTQIA+ community. This piece merges past, present, and future into a single image, proposing new ways of inhabiting time and space, breaking with linear temporality and creating a sensory and fluid experience where identities intertwine and are re-signified.
In the Surface series, personal archives, such as a 1950s photograph of the artist’s grandmother at the beach, share the same scenery with people from his current daily life. These records of pleasure and leisure reflect on how the body is perceived and how it inhabits space, while also addressing themes of tourism, memory, and the economies that shape these moments of consumption.
In Dying Desires, freedom of movement is explored through lines that interact with flowers, expanding the idea of the body by integrating it with still-life elements. Light and shadow, essential to the depth of the work, are handled with precision, inviting viewers into a reflection on the everyday and on different temporalities. Fahy also challenges the relationship with his medium, transforming paper - typically fragile - into a dynamic, sculptural body. By combining wood and paper, the artist creates works that transcend two-dimensionality, expanding drawing into architectural forms that evoke immersive spatial and sensory experiences.
By translating biographical and fictional moments into drawing, Jean challenges our perception of the body, creating a space between the figurative and the surreal. Ephemeral Desire: Body-Archive in Moviment offers a reflection on how we inhabit time and space and how we relate to the bodies around us. Interweaving technique, memory, and desire, the exhibition invites us to explore a space where the ephemeral and the permanent coexist and where human relationships are in constant transformation.