Lais Myrrha (Belo Horizonte, 1974) addresses the failures of Brazil’s mid-century modernist project through a critique of architecture and its primary materials.  Her video Infinite Column (2011) features cement bags being continuously stacked in a single, increasingly unstable column. Titled after an iconic monument by Constantin Brancusi, Myrrha’s video questions the role of monuments and their role in official state narratives. The hard-edge geometric pattern that emerges from the accumulated sacks of concrete also invites an ironic reading of the utopian aspirations of concrete art in Brazil.

Credit

Lais Myrrha: Infinite Column is organized by Beverly Adams, Curator of Latin American Art, Blanton Museum of Art.

Funding provided by the Barbara Duncan Centennial Endowed Lectureship.