Eduardo Aquino: TAPUME

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Eduardo Aquino. TAPUME (detail), 2021

existing construction hoarding and covered sidewalk structure, plywood, painting. Image courtesy of the artist.

Eduardo Aquino: TAPUME

Curated by Blair Fornwald, Director/Curator

Reception: Thursday, September 22, 5:00-8:00 pm

Tapume means “construction hoarding” in Portuguese. Construction hoardings conceal sites of activity while becoming sites of activity themselves. Palimpsests bearing the traces of collectively-realized, ad-hoc, and ephemeral gestures, they are tagged with graffiti, covered with posters, and scuffed and scraped by passers-by. These markings are subsequently repainted, an accrual often producing, quite unintentionally, a painterly, minimalist aesthetic. 

For this three-part project, artist and architect Eduardo Aquino has repurposed the covered sidewalk and hoarding wall installed adjacent to the exterior of the Winnipeg Art Gallery during the construction of Qaumajuq. In its first iteration, the structure was presented, relatively untouched, within the WAG itself. Aquino’s juxtaposition encouraged an aesthetic appraisal of this “incidental found painting” while addressing the roles of both the workers who build civic infrastructure and the citizens who engage with it, leave their mark on it, and ultimately determine its use.  

For its second and current iteration at the School of Art Gallery, Aquino has modified the hoarding wall and sidewalk so that the structure wraps around the contours of its intimately-scaled and uniquely-shaped Collections Gallery and has subtly altered the surface of the painted wall to emphasize its Rothko-esque compositional elements. Enveloping the viewer, the work is reminiscent of Rothko’s famous Chapel, encouraging a stillness within, and a contemplation of, a space usually experienced as an unremarkable passage.

Artist Talk

Eduardo Aquino: TAPUME

Thursday, September 28, 12:00-1:30 pm, ARTlab 136

Also live-streaming on the University of Manitoba School of Art YouTube Channel. ASL interpretation available.

Eduardo Aquino makes work that fluctuates between public art and an experimental approach to representation, often using cues from the urban space. He graduated in Architecture and Urban Studies in Brazil and holds an MFA in Open Media from Concordia University, Montreal. A Professor at the Faculty of Architecture, University of Manitoba, he is a recipient of a National Award from the National Arts Foundation in Brazil, and a National Urban Design Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.