Eleonora Fabião

Since 2008, the streets have been the primary space for Eleonora Fabião (1968, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), being the place where her actions are born and to which they converge. She usually begins her actions after defining a set of notations – which she calls programs – for a determined territory. For example, in Ação carioca #1: converso sobre qualquer assunto [Carioca Action #1: I Talk About any Subject] (2008), she performed in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, oriented by the following lines: “Sit in a chair, barefoot, in front of another empty chair (chairs from my kitchen). Write on a large sheet of paper: ‘I talk about any subject.’ Show the announcement and wait.”

Precisely for being clear, precise and simple, her programs can be faithfully followed, creating an opportunity for the intense happening of everything the artist cannot nor wishes to predetermine – the infinite variability of life and of encounters in the public space. In recent years, besides the unit consisting of the “artist” and the variable made up by the “citizens,” Fabião’s actions have relied on the complicit cooperation of “collaborators” previously invited to take part in some stages of her actions. At the same time, her propositions have focused on possibilities of mediation and intercrossings between various public contexts. Fabião’s actions are thus experienced as collective exercises, through which visible and invisible properties of places, objects, people and paths are set into vibration.