The featured Brazilian artist for Rio+20, invited by the Brazilian Environment Minister and given 600 square meters of exhibition space at the Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro (located next to the Parque Flamengo, where most of the parallel People's Summit is being held) is Siron Franco, who has put together a multi-media installation called "Brasil Cerrado." I had not heard of him before, but he apparently exhibited during the 1992 Earth Summit as well, when the MAM mounted an enormous exhibit by the artist and environmentalist, Frans Krajcberg, featuring monumental sculptures made of charred trees and which clearly denounced the burning and clearing of Brazil's iconic rainforests. "Brasil Cerrado" similarly intends to rally the public against environmental destruction in Brazil, this time focusing on another, lesser known biome or eco-region, the vast, intensely bio-diverse, tropical savanna that stretches across a fifth of the country's territory. Given its less iconic, scrubbier vegetation -- as compared with the Amazon -- the cerrado landscape and biological diversity has not gained much popular attention, nor much protection from development. Only 1.5% of the cerrado has been given protection through federally established reserves.
Franco's exhibit attempts to immerse the public into the cerrado through a series of multi-media, multi-sensorial, ambient installations, featuring passages through video projections of water and fire, photo-projections of flora and fauna, intensely floral fragrances that then turn to the smell of smoke, digital maps documenting burnings under the sounds of lowing cattle, and a series of silhouettes of displaced animals. The use of mirrors throughout helps to expand the space and intensify the immersive effect of the installations and also places the spectator into the frame of reference, placing him or her within the representation of the region, evoking feelings of vulnerability and responsibility.
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