Antifurniture as part of the main project of the 13th South American Biennale (13a Bienal do Mercosul)

Curated by Marcello Dantas

Porto Alegre, Brazil

September 15 – November 20, 2022

Sketches by Olga Treivas

Images by Filipe Conde and Thiele Elissa

The quotidian human body is capable of sitting, laying down, standing and leaning — yet it has the fascinating ability to turn these mundane behaviors into sacred gestures, placing the meaning of Antifurniture somewhere between the amusement park and the torture grounds.

The plain, ascetic message behind Antifurniture: entertainment is not necessarily what we expect it to be. This illusion of pleasure may suddenly collapse, becoming a wearisome endeavor. Created in collaboration with architect Olga Treivas, Antifurniture explores this dissonance, creating a theme park whose attractions either place the body out of step with its surroundings or make those circumstances outright uncomfortable.

These objects maintain the illusion of furniture when viewed from a distance, but any semblance of practicality fades away upon closer inspection: they immediately transform into sculptures on first contact with the human body.

Placed in one of Antifurniture objects, a human body automatically becomes a body of endurance, mistreatment, a political body — or even a body of war, which became particularly important as of February 24, 2022.

The delicate relationship between an obvious entertaining element and the sadness of the human body’s fragility and transiency brings the visitors experiencing Antifurniture to the new understanding of their own physicality as well as of the strings connecting the routine body to the body of statement.