The classical — canonical — experience of the spectator in relation to a work of art consists in raising a gaze that places it at a distance, however close it may be. This formulation is, with slight differences, similar to the one Walter Benjamin gave to the concept of aura, that is, something unique and immanent to the work.
But if we think of an experience of total proximity to the work of art (which is not what usually happens in museums or art galleries), in other words, as an experience of contact, assemblage, and re-signification, then we must conceive, simultaneously, the idea of a provisional space of presentation.
A Participação das Pedras is a collective exercise on the “exhibition value” of artistic objects, of sculpture, and of matter that travels through time — stone.
Do some objects have more aura than others? Does a sculpture change when it is moved from one place to another? Is it possible to describe what another person is seeing? And the stones? What do they ultimately have to tell us?