NORMANDO v. JÚLIA MILARÉ
Normando, in collaboration with contemporary Brazilian artist Julia Milaré, developed a capsule collection, titled "Tristes Trópicos" (Sad Tropics), with a wardrobe made of recycled fabrics, organic cotton, Egyptian cotton, and pure linen, hand-painted by Milaré.
Resonating with our current moment, where the clash between man and nature is necessary, the "Tristes Trópicos" collection, which bears the homonymous title of Levis Strauss's anthropological literary publication, is composed of gender-neutral pieces: chemises, shirts, jackets, t-shirts, dresses, and scarves, and features paintings based on and reinterpreted from early 20th-century scientific illustrations of animals and plants characteristic of Amazonian flora and fauna, mostly documented by Europeans.
In a fugere urbem atmosphere, the pieces, mostly made of light fabrics and tawny tones, feature hand-painted motifs of animals and plants such as: pink river dolphin, Pitu shrimp, uçá crab, and Amazonian black scorpion; as well as plants such as: tajá and victoria regia. All this rich biocultural heritage carries strong symbolism in popular imagination, blending aspects of species' biology with culture itself in their daily lives, in a poetic way, representing a unique expression of historical preservation and the language of a people.
The pieces challenge the destruction of a way of life, of the Brazilian biome, increasingly threatened by economic and political interests, often disguised as progress. It is necessary, as a society in unstable change, to get closer to what we want to understand, to local cultures, to observe their daily activities, rituals, and if possible, to participate in them in order to gain an understanding of the culture and evolutionary formation.
From conversations between Normando and artist Julia Milaré, the artist developed a canvas with references from the brand: Lina Bo Bardi's modernism, Burle Marx's geometric abstraction and his organized tropical gardens, which until then had human intervention, and the displacement of this discourse, bringing within the amorphous window a garden or a forest with Amazonian vegetation in its purest form, without human alterations.
This "inside out, upside down" game, which strongly echoes the discourses used in Julia Milaré's works, is how this collection is built, bringing the Amazonian tropical fauna and flora, including animals and plants rich in symbolism and superstitions, which indeed represent the tropics, subsequently affected by human hands.