Juca fiis (rio de janeiro, 1989) works at the encounter between art, education and mediation. In their work, not only art makes education more interesting than art itself, but also education makes art more interesting than education itself. From movements as simple as complex, in its methodologies they disarticulate politically, socially and culturally standardized learning and engenders apparently subtle processes of unlearning these historically constructed gears. This is the case of footprint - school of zines, research developed by the artist in collaboration with children during his residency at pivô. Interested in investigating language through teaching-learning processes using art as a methodological tool and the interest and repertoire of children themselves as the first and main material, juca proposed a series of graphic creation and booklet printing workshops - printed with their feet.
Language, in addition to being an apparatus that allows us to communicate, is also a tool for controlling the state, which produces and reproduces certain logics of thinking and living. By proposing this project, they are aware of the role that language plays in the political structure that organizes us as a society and the power it has to shape places of privilege and exclusion. Through this apparently simple action - but never just simple, as we can see in his work, the artist invites a collective, structural and situated deconstruction of certain binary, therefore colonial, logics of learning, thinking and behavior. Literally, he invites us to unlearn on our own two feet.
Education is their rebellion, and rebellion is never free!
Text by Monica Hoff
Curator and program developer at Pivô Art and Research residency