Love

Critical text

Agnaldo Farias March 2001

Index / Agnaldo Farias

I have always been deeply impressed by the fragile status of the king in a game of chess. His restricted movements and slow advances across the chessboard reveal the inertia imposed by the protective barrier built around him by the royal retinue. It is precisely the king’s presence, however, that justifies this unique army, made up of pairs of pieces —with the exception of the eight pawns, which elbow their way across the chessboard as they resolutely advance forward and eventually move sideways to capture, serving as expendable currency in both attack and defense—, and the queen, a piece as solitary as the king, but unlike him, capable of moving swiftly in any direction. In this royal couple, despite the queen’s vigor and suppleness, the king validates her presence, as well as that of all the other pieces, in this game played by two opponents, each commanding an army, one light and the other dark. The player with the light pieces starts the game with an opening move (either the indefatigable Queen’s Pawn Opening, 1.d4, or the King’s Pawn Opening, 1.e4, among other opening variations), an attack countered by an equally obvious and natural defense, since, in the early stages of the game, moves are predictable and fairly predetermined. Then the fragile balance achieved by interpenetrating and clashing forces, the invisible fabric woven from the threads of the players’ moves, begins to unravel. At this point, experience offers players a glimpse of the game’s possible sequences, while intuition provides them with a mental picture of their partner-opponent’s moves. “Partner” because one does not play chess alone; and “opponent” because chess is a game of measuring forces, in which victory and defeat are brought about through a series of strategic moves, tentative paths along which players attempt to checkmate their opponent’s king.

Games incorporate and prefigure human interactions, which are themselves games people play. Is it necessary to insist on this point? Beth Moysés believes it is. In fact, her artistic career has been shaped as an inventory and analysis of a private game, the origin of all games: the relationship between men and women.

In her earlier paintings and objects, the artist created metaphors using the bridal gown, that age-old fetish sustained by the notion of purity, a receptacle for considerable emotional investment, fantasy, and idealization. While exploring love relationships and the spectrum of heartbreak, trauma, myth, and their associated rites, the artist ventured into deeper and more unsettling territory, as this exhibition demonstrates.

Before addressing the relationship between king and queen that the artist presents in the larger installation, let us first consider her awe-inspiring initiative to set up a life-size chess game in the gallery space. As a contest of mental skills, chess stages a silent dispute between two individuals, each moving pieces according to strategies aimed at securing victory, or at least a stalemate. Within the confines of this quadrangular territory, divided into 64 squares of identical size across which opponents move their pieces according to strict rules, the king is by far the most restricted character. Most certainly, this is not our idea of a king; indeed, throughout history, immobility has not been a defining characteristic of the male figure. Heroes such as Ulysses, Hercules, Lancelot, and even the monotonous Sisyphus were condemned to ceaseless exertion. Men moved linearly across the territory to hunt and conquer, whereas women were assigned the circularity of household chores and domestic expectations, with needlework resting on their laps.

Beth Moysés’s immaculately white queen stands alone on an equally white chessboard. The absence of black pieces and dark squares suggests the existence of another game within the game. The queen’s white figure has been hollowed out so that the resulting empty space contains a reduced version of the king’s silhouette. The king’s figure traverses the queen’s: he is the absence, the part of the queen’s body that has been violently removed and held at a distance, as indicated by its smaller dimensions. As the queen moves, she takes the king with her; he is her mobile mate.

On a day in June 2000, one hundred wedding ceremonies were held at Carandiru, the infamous São Paulo prison, which was also the largest in Brazil. On that occasion, one hundred brides made their way to the penitentiary, where their future husbands were imprisoned. Upon arrival, they carefully applied their makeup and dressed as majestically as their modest white gowns allowed. Deeply moved, they received a collective blessing, exchanged wedding rings with their beloved grooms, and kissed them with their eyes tightly shut. Then, joyfully and still deeply moved, they ate their wedding cake, posed for photographs, and received congratulations from those in attendance. Finally, they kissed their grooms goodbye, changed back into their ordinary clothes, and left the immense and inhospitable penal complex alone, while their new husbands remained locked inside. Alone, several of them walked to the bus stop, where, bridal bouquet in hand and the chilly winter wind biting at their faces, they waited patiently for the bus that would take them back to their loneliness. Every week thereafter, the brides returned for a love dispensed ever so sparingly through anxiously awaited encounters that their partners, out of an uncommon tenderness —given the abrupt restriction of their movements—, cherished with unsurpassed love and fidelity.