Artist Lais Myrrha was invited by Pivô to develop the exhibition “Projeto Gameleira 1971”, as a part of the events included in the Pivô Annual Activities Plan, realized through the cultural incentive law Lei Rouanet (Minc). Starting June 7^th, the artist will present a symbolic (and physical) reconstitution of one of Brazil’s biggest civil construction disasters, which took place in the city of Belo Horizonte in 1971 and was designed by architect Oscar Niemeyer. Both the accident itself, known in the field as the “the Gameleira tragedy,” as well as memories regarding the project have been all but erased from the public’s consciousness. All that’s left is a handful of accounts and news reports from the time of the accident.

The efficiency with which this accident was distanced from the image of the architect– a symbol of Brazilian modernist design– is largely due to the dictatorial regime which governed the country at the time. After the accident, the entire pavilion was removed and there is no longer any official documentation of the project; it isn’t even possible to find the original blueprints.

Lais Myrrha’s work was conceived out of these significant gaps in history. The artist’s proposal is to construct a “large miniature model” of this accident inside the COPAN building (Pivô), based on a photographic image published in the newspaper Estado de Minas at the time of the incident.

According to Myrrha, realizing this work inside the COPAN is especially meaningful due to the fact that this building was also forsaken by Niemeyer, though only partially and for other reasons. By proposing within this context a kind of historical reconstruction which provokes a symbolic/mythical deconstruction of the (official) modern project implemented in Brazil with many missteps and stumbles, the artist, in one way or another, contributes to our liberation from critic Mário Pedrosa’s unfortunate claim that Brazil is a country that was sentenced to be modern.