Image above: Tamar Guimarães, A Man Called Love, 2007

Media Release

Tamar Guimarães’s fascinating and poetic slide-work, A Man Called Love (2008), tells the true story of Francisco Candido Xavier (1910 – 2002), a Brazilian psychic medium who dedicated his life to writing down the words spoken to him by the dead. The most prolific psychographer of all time, he wrote over 400 books. In the 1960’s and 1970’s, he was a celebrity in Brazil, drawing large crowds whenever he appeared in public. His Novel, Our Home, (first published in 1944 and continually in print ever since) describes a city where the recently deceased learn and work. It goes on to narrate a tropical vision of social democracy, describing a town with magnificent squares and benches for a million people, where delicate flowers grow amid illuminated fountains. For Guimarães, speaking of Xavier requires addressing Brazil’s race and class relations, and its military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, during which Xavier enjoyed his greatest popularity. She addresses the development of Spiritism in Brazil, its early association with utopian socialisms, and subsequent distancing from them during the dictatorship. A Man Called Love, which is 20 minutes long, makes use of archival images of Xavier, of spirit materializations produced in the 1930s and 1940s in Brazil, of Rio and São Paulo, and of protests against the military regime in the late 1960s.

Biography:

Tamar Guimarães is a Brazilian artist based in Denmark. A graduate of Goldsmiths College, London and Malmõ Art Academy, Sweden, her practice is concerned with power relations underpinning social interactions and relationships between history and subjectivity within postcolonial contexts.

 

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