Ocupação Laerte
The 20th edition of Ocupação (Occupation) in Itaú Cultural honors the work of the cartoonist Laerte.
A retrospective of 40 years of production that gathers about 2 thousand work pieces of one of the most important names of brazilian comic books.
We developed the book that complements the exposition. The publication, besides being a resume of what can be seen in the Ocupação, also brings a curatorial text by Rafael Coutinho, artist’s son, essays by the researcher Maria Clara Carneiro and the journalist André Conti analyzing Laerte’s works and a text by the psychoanalyst Letícia Lanz, about identity, sex and gender.
The dust jacket that wraps the book cover is also a double-sided poster.
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Inside the book there’s a booklet that when opened reveals the photoshoot entitled ‘No armário do Laerte’ (In Laerte’s closet.), in which the artist was photographed wearing her jewelry, sandals and dresses in an apartment in the Center of São Paulo.
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The image of the Minotaur, monster of mythology that guards an inescapable labyrinth, inspired the expo’s scenography.
The idea of labyrinth was also represented in the book’s graphic project that proposes a non-linear reading. There aren’t page numbers, also, texts and photos positioning changes from page to page, so the reader needs to turn the book all the time, as if traversing a labyrinth.
“In this labyrinth that's his work exists a creature that haunts, as in the Myth of Minotaur. Restlessness or anguish, a superego on the loose, an entity without sex that cornered, attacks. It lives inside the artist or it's part of him. An exoskeleton that controls and guides. May be Laerte himself, the creature among us. He, my father, a monster.”
