‘Here everything appears to be still in construction and is already a ruin’: rethinking ‘brasilidade’ in the work of Cerith Wyn Evans and Laercio Redondo

This article examines how the artists Cerith Wyn Evans (b.1958) and Laercio Redondo (b.1967) explore the myth of brasilidade (Brazilianness) as a doorway to critique the fiction of the ‘unfinished’ project of modernity in Brazil. Focusing on Evans’s firework sculpture Aqui tudo parece que é ainda construção e já é ruína, a partir de ‘Fora da Ordem’ de Caetano Veloso (Here everything seems to be under construction and left in ruins, from ‘Fora da Ordem’ by Caetano Veloso; 2004) and three installations by Redondo: Paisagem impressa (Printed landscape; 2013), Venda–jogo da memória falha (Sale–faulty memory game; 2013) and Lembrança de Brasília (Memory from Brasília; 2012), the present author argues that these works address the way in which the myth of Brazil as the country of the future – intrinsically modern, lusciously tropical, racially democratic and economically and culturally rising – is a poignant contemporary theme, as it has long been a symbol of utopianism, resisting deconstruction even in the tumultuous first decades of the twenty-first century.