Multidisciplinary Brazilian artist Allan Weber was born in 1992 in the 5 Bocas favela in the northern zone of Rio de Janeiro. His practice fuses assemblage, installation, sculpture and photography, all of which collide at Nottingham Contemporary in ways that feel electric.
In his first major UK exhibition, Weber uses his everyday life as source material. Favelas are the self-built shantytowns on the impoverished outskirts of Brazil’s large cities. 5 Bocas, where Weber still lives and works, informs his art in a mythical and literal sense. An assemblage of geometrically aligned razor blades are emblazoned with the word “Lord”, inspired by the razor fade haircut popular in Rio. Machine guns fashioned from old cameras allude to the crime and drug dealing all too often associated with the city.
A series of wall-based work consists of coloured tarpaulin collaged together to create geometric abstractions that speak to the tents used in the city’s hip-hop-influenced funk carioca parties. Blue, greens, orange and greys are spliced together to create grid-like patterns reminiscent of works by Brazilian artists Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica.
Weber worked as a food delivery driver during the pandemic to help support his art practice, and ideas about commerce, service, social class and labour run throughout this show. In a large hanging installation, helmets, moped seats and insulated delivery bags sourced in Rio and Nottingham are strung together with netting and bungee cords. Is it a safety net or a trap? The objects, as you circle them, look like flies caught in a spider’s web, evoking a sense of doom – a clear metaphor for the precarious nature of the gig economy. There’s an inherent suspense in the way the dismembered objects appear thrown into the air.
In the centre of an adjacent room is an opened Deliveroo bag, the bright, foil-lined turquoise object so ubiquitous today that it’s at once invisible and hypervisible. That very ordinariness interrupts the space and sits strangely, as if it may have been left there by accident. Look inside the bag, however, and you’ll see a lo-fi music video showing kids playing with kites. There is something riveting about the simplicity of this piece. Its power lies in the clarity of its message: that Deliveroo riders have complex interior lives too, full of dreams, beauty and romance – just like their customers.
Weber reinforces his close relationship with his community through a display of portraits and objects that allude to Cinco Bocas FC, the youth football team he set up (who meet at the 5 Bocas gallery he also founded), and to the artist’s Christian evangelical Pentecostal upbringing. On the walls are photographs of people in communion, smoking and drinking, as well as football shirts inscribed with biblical extracts and local proverbs.
Weber’s execution is tight without skimping on details or compromising on authenticity. His works tell the true story of living and working in a favela in a way only someone who lives there can. The results are compelling.
African-Puerto Rican artist Daniel Lind-Ramos (born 1953) is best known for transformative sculptural works that turn found objects into huge creations. In a parallel show at Nottingham Contemporary, several of his anthropomorphic figures stand tall and tell stories of colonialism, hurricanes and world disasters.
One of the first figures you encounter is made from mattress springs, a wheelbarrow, a Tannoy, an emergency light, blue and purple fabric and plastic gloves. It’s large and haunting – and something of an optical puzzle. The more you look, the more items you find to decipher; metal chairs, wooden bed legs, shoes. Called Ambulancia – Ambulance – and dated 2020, the piece, you assume, speaks to the sense of emergency brought about by Covid.
Lind-Ramos was born in the town of Loíza on the northeastern coast of Puerto Rico, which was founded by formerly enslaved people in the 16th century. It’s a place that has preserved many West African cultural traditions. The artist attempts to highlight some of these, particularly the importance of storytelling, community and folklore. One sculpture consists of a group of figures made from sheets, pots, wires and wood. They stand in a circle, seeming to surround and protect something sacred perhaps related to ecology. Elsewhere, a boat projects out of the wall, surrounded by hessian sacks imprinted with Puerto Rican dates of importance such as the Taíno Rebellion in 1511, the failed British invasion in 1797 and Hurricane Maria in 2017.
There is a danger that assemblage works shown together can appear jumbled. Lind-Ramos’s sculptures, despite being made from objects either washed up on the shore or gifted by friends and family, never look arbitrary. There is a structure to the sculptures that can feel repetitive, but their materiality and spirit hold you captive.
Star ratings (out of five)
Allan Weber: My Order ★★★★★
Daniel Lind-Ramos: Ensamblajes ★★★★