In her first solo exhibition within a Brazilian institution, Mexican artist Mariana Castillo Deball presents an iteration of her long-term project TO-DAY. This project encompasses an installation which extends across almost the entire first exhibition floor of Pivô and which houses a fictional character that exists only on one day, within multiple years. Accompanying this installation is a newspaper distributed by the artist. In this edition of the installation, the character is inspired by the fable of the Tower of Babel: in the story, humanity tries to build a tower to reach heaven. God, observing these attitudes, punishes them by changing their languages so that they can no longer understand each other and spreading them around the world. The Tower was never completed and different languages were created. The myth serves as a metaphor for the location of the work: Copan would be a contemporary Tower of Babel in São Paulo.

The character jumps back and forth through history within a 24-hour time spectrum, with the date of their existence consistently aligning with the official opening of the exhibition – in this case, September 2nd. This specific date is marked by a multitude of events: from the surrender and conclusion of World War II to revelations about the shortage of gold for coinage within the Portuguese Empire; from the end of telegraphic censorship to struggles against “cangaço” in the Northeast of Brazil; from concerned reports on nuclear armistice to the devastating fire at one of the country’s greatest cultural treasures – the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. These events are documented in newspapers and accompanied by advertisements promising miraculous solutions for children’s lack of appetite, comfortable yet elegant shoes, or notes on space-related scientific discoveries. 

The drawings and collages that constitute the installation are inspired by those events and by the artist’s research, which imagines the ethnographic museum as a metaphor for the Tower of Babel, a colonial construction with the ambition of bringing together all objects and all languages. The installation also contains sound pieces composed by the artist based on the appropriation of sound recordings from the 1938 Missões de Pesquisas Folclóricas (Folklore Research Missions) collection, created by Mário de Andrade, and from a virtual collection entitled A Nova Arca de Noé (Noah’s New Ark). The cacophony is evidence of Babel’s confusion of languages.

Throughout her career, Mariana Castillo Deball has explored the role objects play in our identity. She has dedicated herself to examining the cracks and complexities of the museum in various projects, recognizing it also as a colonial device, designed to store and safeguard elements of material culture. Coincidentally (or not), the opening of this exhibition coincides with the aforementioned fire at the National Museum – a place of significance for the artist’s research and training. The fire devastated over 20 million items that constituted its collections, sparking ethical concerns about the constitution of these archives and the lack of memory policies that characterize the history of institutions in Brazil. Deball’s interest lies in the disappearance of objects, and how chance influences how knowledge and culture are produced, represented, and disseminated.

At present, museums worldwide are grappling with the challenge of acknowledging the colonial origins of their collections. Often, this task involves actions like restitution and reclassification of objects, but these steps may not fully address the legitimate demands of those striving for historical recognition. The present challenge lies in contemplating more profound changes for such spaces. This entails recognizing that institutional structures are rooted in historical and legal relationships that are still colonial and attempting to reconstruct them. As suggested by German curator and researcher Clémentine Deliss: “To remediate the ethnographic collection is to engage with that mix of discomfort, doubt, and melancholia, the caput mortuum phase of alchemical regeneration, transforming these objects into a contemporary environment and thereby building additional interpretations onto their existing set of references“.

Five years after the fire, some rooms within the National Museum are still engulfed in debris. Amid the charred materials, it’s challenging to distinguish between architectural remains and millennia-old objects. Approximately 85% of its collection was utterly destroyed, and the remaining items will serve as a starting point for a new collection. This raises the inevitable question: what form will this new collection take? What principles and approaches will guide the composition of a “natural history” museum erected over two centuries ago? The very notion of separating natural and human sciences appears problematic. As philosopher and scientist Isabelle Stengers asserts: some people love dividing and categorizing, while others build bridges – forging connections that turn a division into an active contrast, with the power to affect and generate thought and sentiment.

Museums of the 19th century served to justify colonization and the divisions through which some felt entitled to study and categorize others – a separation that still lingers. As the restoration of the National Museum progresses, a team of curators and museologists is working to envision the exhibitions planned to welcome visitors once again in 2027. In this case, tragedy has given rise to the opportunity not only to rebuild the physical structure but also to reconceptualize the foundational principles of the collection. It’s a chance to deconstruct its colonial perspective. Ethnological collections now benefit from the fresh perspective of an indigenous curator – anthropologist Tonico Benites Guarani-Kaiowá, who earned his doctorate at the National Museum itself. In an interview with Piauí magazine, he states: “This collection was formed from a colonial perspective, but we hope to reconsider it today as a collection with – not about – the indigenous communities of Brazil.” 

Castillo Deball defines uncomfortable objects function as fables that give voice to non-humans: they imagine their voices, their consistency and their temporality. Products of desire, research, or the imagination, they unhinge our conception of the world and force us to see from their perspective. What do non-humans have to say about the world we have constructed around them? About our definitions, our manipulations, and our uses? What is left of objects after so much historical maneuvering, and what would they testimonies be if they could tell us their stories from their own perspectives? What would a collection be like where objects are no longer “uncomfortable”?

Navigating the artist’s specialized research with one’s body and eyes is akin to being among those who build bridges, as Stengers suggests. Mariana’s work demonstrates the meaning of cataloging and preserving collections of ritual objects and memories belonging to others. Simultaneously, it teaches us that we can dare to create transgressive taxonomies.