1. If you were to formulate your current work as questions, what could they be?

A poetics of fragmentary traces and ruins that events leave scattered, both in the realm of social memory (or collective trauma) of the generations involved in such events, and in the narratives constructed by history, literature, and visual arts—without attempting to vividly recall the past, represent the violence of certain silences, or rescue and build a new history. The focus of the research is “the processes through which historical or contemporary social events, as diverse as the War of Canudos or the eviction of Pinheirinho in São Paulo, traverse different layers of the collective imagination, generating or erasing records in social memory,” using a methodology close to social anthropology. As a rule, the production is the result of experiences and field research that can last weeks, months, or years (its developments have not yet ended) and that call for reflection on the marks and recurrences in the formation of Brazilian society.

2. What are a few tension points that drive your investigation today? (i.e. empirical, social, political, environmental)

In recent years, I have been analyzing the implications and developments of political and historical acts in Brazilian history through documentary, archival, archaeological, and fictional work. The exhibitions present structures similar to small “museums,” where I gather various forgotten fragments, producing a system of objects that articulates artistic and non-artistic materials, and a set of actions, not necessarily confined to an artistic object, but dispersed in exhibitions, books, workshops, debates, walks, etc.

3. ENVIRONMENT - If we were to depict an Open-Studio, what does the general environment in your studio look like? - What are your main mediums (technical and/or conceptual)

[...] Thus, through the disparate accumulation of details, perhaps a priori innocuous, something begins in his work. Opening spaces for silences, experimenting with narratives, allowing approximations to emerge, as a conscious archivist, Ícaro Lira questions, however, the task that seems to fall upon him. With the rules of classification, separation, and attribution, he prefers the modest and discreet accumulation of heterogeneous objects and the lines of leakage opened by ephemeral associations. "Say but I prefer not to." Trying to tell the story of intimate or collective trajectories through fragile and reticent groupings, in order to show lines of meaning irreducible to grand narratives. Contrary to a single voice, Ícaro Lira chooses the intimate archive, a fossil and non-homogeneous form par excellence. Thus, the displacement of an object is always possible and, with it, a writing that incessantly escapes conclusion.

Elena Lespes Muñoz _ excerpt from the text of the exhibition "lessons from the stone," 2019.

4. PROCESS / STUDIO - What are the actions or routines that fuel your practice? What relationship do you have with your studio?

I place my self in the role of a researcher and articulator of stories that highlight the very multiplicity of viewpoints and the possibilities of their construction, underlined by the wide variety of media used in the installations, such as texts, images of works by other artists, photographs, bureaucratic records, maps, pamphlets, journalistic materials, advertisements, films, among others. In the process of collecting these materials, the action is also similar to that of an archaeologist, as it involves travels through investigated regions, collecting objects found along the way, such as bones, remnants of sacred and popular images, as well as extensive research in public archives of these cities, neighborhoods, and localities. Finally, the investigation is completed by obtaining testimonies from inhabitants and living in loco, even if, unlike an anthropologist, there is no scientific methodology or long-term establishment in these places, so the accounts are received through informal and random means, like conversations during a bus trip or a visit to a local commercial establishment.

5. A PIECE - Is there one artwork (in your production) that currently stands out to you? If so, what does it pose?

The work is woven while you walk and converse through places whose history has been repressed by violence and forgetfulness. Places whose meaning escapes most of the Brazilian population. There, you let yourself be captivated by indicative fragments of the past and/or the ruin of the present: bones, ragged fabrics, rocks, shells, and resilient vegetation. When you start gathering these objects, making such an inventory, you create an exhibition possibility that is not strictly didactic, historical, or scientific: its a synesthetic evocation of what is human in struggles that, if they appear today as dry roots, could very well form the broth of tomorrow's struggles. Could anyone, here in this city without weeds, imagine some of these struggles of today and yesterday?

6. RECURRENCE - Retrospectively; How would you define the recurrences in your work - conceptual or plastic?

With the awareness that memories are constructed from fragments, the rigor of the scientific method is also relinquished in the reconstruction of these narratives in an exhibition space, working from the open nature of the documents, which do not act as testimonies and records of reality, like historiographical references subject to verification, but as mnemonic traces or memory aids that are potentially articulated in stories. Thus, I allow myself to regularly manipulate these objects, denying the possibility of affirming a single narrative, establishing new significant relationships with each configuration. This procedure is not limited to exhibitions, since in the research archive, I remove, recycle, and discard different materials without attachment to their conservation, which again distances myself from the formal idea of an archivist.

7. PERIPHERAL - In the evident context that we are the product of a time, how do you see your work depicting contemporary times?

Within this context of memory production and narrative construction, the work is characterized by its criticality, its denial of forgetfulness, its social concern, but also by the non-formalization of meanings or fixed objects. On the contrary, even in an exhibition space, its production is in constant flux, undergoing changes without concerns about the elevated and traditional status of “artwork,” a concept that, ultimately, is insufficient to encompass the dimensions of movement, fragment, and narrative freedom that appear in the works.

8. IMPACT - What would you like the impact of your work to be?

When encountering a structure that seems like a conglomerate of materials without logical sense in the system of objects with functional purposes, Richard Tuttle asks himself: “Why is this nothing?” What exists on that surface that captures the gaze? What is missing for the gaze cast upon this, which is nothing, by the simple lack of skill or need for a name, to materialize as an artistic act? The proposals arose from this same need to domesticate the gaze before incomprehensible fragments, inexplicable relationships, and the enigma present in everyday life. For this, it is necessary to dedicate oneself to things as one dedicates to a pet, making ourselves available to them so that they become docile. Create a space of complicity, remember that the essential is everywhere and must be pursued beyond the exhibition space - before it becomes a cage for our captive animals.

9. An action - that “embodies” or stimulates your work.

ca.mi.nhar - to. walk

To walk (in a certain direction)

To direct oneself.

To move through, by.foot

The act or manner of walking.

Etymological caminhar: caminho + -ar.

10. Name an artist “embedded” in practice / quest.

Jimmie Durham and Maria Thereza Alves.