Cat did it!

(2021)

Location

Commonage Project, London

Dates

2021

Materials

Mixed fabric, Matatabi wood, Valerian, Acrylic resin

Curated by Luís Manuel Araújo


Shown during VIA Arts Prize in 2019



Best Foot Backward was conceived in response to the architecture of Sala Brasil at the Embassy of Brazil in London, a former P&O ticketing hall whose decorative programme retains maritime motifs and traces of its history as a space associated with travel and departure. Working with these existing elements rather than treating the gallery as a neutral container, the installation used textile, plaster and sculptural interventions to redirect the architecture, producing a spatial experience in which orientation, reflection and scale became deliberately unstable.

The title loosely echoes the Curupira, a figure from Brazilian folklore whose backwards-facing feet are said to leave tracks that lead travellers in the wrong direction. Rather than illustrating the myth, the exhibition takes this gesture of misdirection as a structural device, connecting it to recurring concerns in the work around escapism, uncertainty and the construction of unreliable narratives. The space becomes both route and obstacle: familiar enough to navigate, but continually resisting a clear beginning, ending or direction.

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