During the 1929 crisis my great-grandfather, a Lebanese immigrant in Brazil who until then had a stable life, lost everything. He passed away some years later leaving my great-grandmother with seven children to raise. Sofia was a proud and resilient lady who was not easily defeated and she soon came up with a strategy to make sure all her sons went to university: one at a time, whilst the younger ones worked to secure the family’s living costs. As well as other domestic duties, her daughters were in charge of maintaining their brothers’ respectable appearance. From time-to-time, they would unstitch their suits and sew them back together inside out, piece-by-piece, so the less faded side of the fabric would be on the outside. Much more than a hobby, the manual work of mending clothing was, in this case, an act of resistance and necessity, and even an act of faith, projecting the overcoming of temporary adversity.   

According to historians, the first record of the concept of planned obsolescence also dates back to the period of the Great Depression. In 1932, the American economist Bernard London wrote a pamphlet in which he blamed the economic crisis on consumers, claiming that they were not respecting the law of obsolescence by ‘using their old cars, their old tires, their old radios and their old clothing much longer than statisticians had expected’. London’s insidious proposal – which would have a huge impact on the reorganisation of late capitalism’s mode of production – was the creation of a regulatory body that would establish the expiration of every commodity (from shoes to buildings) and penalise those who didn’t observe the items’ expiry dates accordingly. 

As we know, in recent decades, the shelf life of industrialised products has been significantly reduced, whilst the costs of repairing white goods, electronic items and even clothes and furniture is often incompatible with their original price. Therefore, we often just buy new things. Given the environmental impact caused by the unrestrained replacement of industrialised goods, the notion of repair, which is imbedded in Tonico Lemos Auad’s solo show at Pivô, re-emerges today as an act of resistance, even though it has always been present amongst the less privileged. 

The exhibition O que não tem conserto (That which cannot be repaired) brings together a set of six artworks, including two newly commissioned pieces. They explore some of the central ideas within Auad’s practice, such as the use of manual techniques associated to the vernacular vocabulary, the appropriation of symbolic images and the concept of repair – understood both as the conventional idea of fixing objects of everyday use and the adherence to a more humanistic and meditative aspect connected to the act of repairing and restoring. O que não tem conserto (2015) is also the title of a new sculpture based on the improvised micro-architecture of workshops that offer small repair services, which can still be found in São Paulo’s city centre. At certain times during the exhibition, the sculpture will be inhabited by providers of different repair services that will be offered to the public free of charge. More than its participative nature, it is precisely the traces of these activities, i.e. the way in which these professionals must organise their small places in order to work, that interest the artist inasmuch as they contribute to a certain configuration of the sculpture space. 

In the first room, we see a range of works on fabric, a material that Auad has been focusing on in recent years. The eleven suspended pieces that form the installation Sea Horses (2014-15) establish a close dialogue with Pivô’s fragmented architecture, highlighting the verticality of columns and exposed piping through handmade and organic elements. In the same space, the floor pieces that comprise the installation Unruly Architecture (2015) are formed by small crochet container-like pieces placed on plinths made of different types of wood, revealing the contrast between the lightness and solidity of the two materials. 

The large curved wall of Pivô’s ‘square’ is covered with Reflected Archaeology / Folkestone (2011), which was shown for the first time at the Folkestone Triennial. Under a silver layer, resembling lottery scratch cards, the viewer is invited to uncover images related to the context of the coastal town where the work was originally showcased. Reflected Archaeology somehow mirrors the quasi-archaeological process of unveiling the evidence of a number of renovations carried out over the years in the space that today houses Pivô, whilst engaging the viewer in an activity that demands the expanded time of manual work – a feature that is so prominent in Auad’s practice. 

Finally, the last exhibition room hosts a new version of the installation Small Fires (2015), in which the same principle of scratching a surface is used to delete some of the elements that illustrate tins of different products, keeping only the images related to nature. Arranged over the floor, the installation transforms these disposable consumer objects into a meticulously constructed landscape. 

O que não tem conserto brings together a collection of works that use and preserve knowledge, techniques and manual skills that are passed down through generations, and continue to persistently and anachronistically exist in parallel to technological advances and institutionalised schooling. These practices, which involve simple and repetitive gestures or orally transmitted narratives, are absorbed and turned into works that manifest a restorative drive singular to the human condition.